Senate: SURE-P under threat

[Mirror]

GEORGE OJI examines the recent threat by the Senate to scrap the Subsidy Reimbursement and Empowerment Programme, SURE-P, by halting further budgetary allocations to the programme.

The trend followed a peculiar pattern last week. First, it was the Works Minister, Mike Onolememen. He was invited to appear before the Senate ad hoc committee on SURE-P to account for the over N10 billion appropriated to his ministry to expend under the SURE-P. For about one and half hours, the lawmakers waited patiently at room 244, Senate new building, venue of the meeting. At the end of the day, there were no words from the minister, not even by proxy to explain why he could not keep the appointment.

Chairman of the committee and the Deputy Senate Leader, Senator Abdul Ningi and the other members of the committee in apparent bemusement, gathered the newsmen present, who also had waited patiently for the minister's appearance in vain. In an informal press conference, an apparently enraged Ningi lashed out at the minister for his disrespect to the parliament by his snobbish attitude.

Said Ningi: "A huge amount of money, totalling over N30 billion, was allocated to the Ministry of Works under the SURE-P. We accordingly invited the minister to render an account of the activities of his ministry under the SURE-P from 2012 to 2013.

"Today, we sat from 2p.m. till about 3:30p.m., waiting to hear from them. But neither the minister, his Minister of State nor the Permanent Secretary showed up till now.

"We sent a letter to them on October 22 which they acknowledged on October 23. This showed that they are aware of today's meeting.

"The president has appointed the wrong people into public offices. We take strong exemption to any minister who thinks he or she is above the law. What they did was a display of crass lawlessness.

"I want to assure you that these ministers will not frustrate this committee. They are trying to undermine the government. By their failure to appear, they are trying to undermine the President and the Senate that cleared them.

"This is the last time this committee will condone such an act from any minister who fails to honour our invitation without any genuine reason. By failing to appear, they are trying to shroud their activities in secrecy. We may not appropriate fund to the SURE-P any longer because of these people. It is no longer business as usual. People must be accountable for their actions."

Senator Ningi however said another invitation would be sent to the Minister of Works and his team, in accordance with the scheduled programme of the Senate ad hoc committee on SURE-P."

The next day, according to the one week schedule of the ad hoc committee, it was the turn of the Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to appear before the committee. Again, like her counterpart in Works, the minister was nowhere to be found.

What was perhaps different in Okonjo- Iweala's case was that she had the civility and courtesy to send her apologies and regrets to the committee for her absence.

On day three, the situation did not show any signs of change or improvement. Both the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Petroleum Minister, Mrs. Dezieni Alison-Madueke and the management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, who were on schedule to appear before the committee shunned the lawmakers' invitation without any apologies.

From the countenances of the lawmakers who were seated in the meeting room, it was very apparent that the situation had gotten out of control and something stringent needed to be done to rescue their honour and integrity.

Again, the lot expectedly fell on Ningi to provide the way forward. Somehow, in order to sound tough and not to continue to sink and lose face under the insult of the ministers and Chief Executive Officers of Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, Ningi announced that the committee would temporarily be suspending further public sittings on the matter.

Meanwhile, the Deputy Leader announced that the parliament would be retreating to confer with the other senators to consider the option of scrapping the SURE-P by denying it further budgetary allocations.

Accoding to him, "Today, we are once again confronted by the forces of antidemocracy, people who unfortunately do not understand what this kind of system provides; the executive, the legislature and the judiciary what makes our democracy different from military regime.

"Today, again we sat here glued to our sit for over one hour awaiting for the arrival of the officials of the NNPC or their agents and the Central Bank or their agents. As we were speaking, we sent letters of invitation to both agencies which were duly acknowledged.

"I think what this tells us is that this SURE-P programme which seems to be for me a cardinal programme of this government is being undermined from the inside. I have no doubt in my mind that the non-appearance today further confirms our fears and reservations of a lot of Nigerians on the secrecy of the implementation of the SURE -P programme and part of our mandate is to unbundle, to open up the details of the implementation of the programme.

"We thought that NNPC is a key to this programme and we wanted to compare notes with the CBN as to monies that accrue to this programme directly from the NNPC.

"Our intention was to make it plain to Nigerians that no one is hiding anything. When the Ministry of Works did not show up we went to the Senate President and he assured us that he was taking the case personally to the President

"We are building evidences against those who are using SURE-P for anything and at the end of the day this programme must come to an end if that is what they want. The National Assembly will not continue to give legitimacy through appropriation to our collective inheritance where the three individuals who run it will not come to give account of the monies that accrue to this programme."

The SURE-P committee was set up in February 2012 by the Federal Government as an interventionist committee to manage the proceeds from the resources from the partial removal of fuel subsidy from N70 to N97 per litre in January that year.

The SURE-P was set up as an intervention programme, to function for the provision of road infrastructure, youth empowerment and job creation, provision of water, intervention in maternal and child care services, etc.

Between last year and September this year, over N500 billion naira has accrued to the funds. While official records from the SURE-P office put the records of accruals at about N500 billion, the records from the NNPC according to members of the Senate Committee on SURE-P shows that the sum of about N800 billion is supposed to be in the kitty of the programme.

There is no gainsaying the fact that the 1999 Constitution as amended, gives the legislature, the exclusive right to appropriate all monies belonging to the entire country before such funds could be expended. The statute also emboldens the lawmakers with the responsibility of monitoring and ensuring prudent expenditure of all such national resources so appropriated.

It was perhaps in that spirit that the lawmakers, as the elected representatives of the Nigerian people feel a sense of responsibility to ensure the monitoring and judicious use of the SURE-P funds.

The question is that can the National Assembly scrap the SURE-P by strangulating the programme through the withholding of appropriations meant for the running of the SURE-P as threatened by the Senate? Ideally and constitutionally speaking, this is possible.

The recent threat is not the first time the National Assembly had issued such a warning. We saw it happened last year when the joint committee of the Senate on Petroleum (downstream and upstream), which conducted the first public probe of the programme issue similar threat.

In response to the threat then, chairman of the SURE-P committee, Chief Christopher Kolade was quick to remind the lawmakers that the decision as whether or not to scrap the committee lies with the Federal Government, which set it up in the first place and not the parliament.

Ordinarily, it would be difficult for any government official to muster the effrontery of treating any invitation by the parliament to account for public resources in their care with disdain, if there had not been repeated evidence of self-serving purposes and interest by the lawmakers for such auditing exercise in the past.

The development, which gave rise to the recent threats by the Senate to scrap the SURE-P is not in the interest of the nation and must quickly be addressed to restore the respect and integrity of the lawmakers and the confidence of Nigerians in the SURE-P. No doubt, the SURE-P has made tremendous and positive impact on the lives of many Nigerians, particularly infrastructural development, youth empowerment and job creation, provision of water, intervention in maternal and child care services. The least the country can do is to sustain this progress.

[Nifemi Donald]

Things are always under threat in this country we just hope something would be done about it on time.

[Nifemi Donald]

I still believe everything is under control