N500bn SURE-P Funds Missing, Senate Insists

Senator Magnus Abe (3rd right), with Andoni Council Chairman, Orom Nte (5th right), former Rivers State Commissioner for Commerce & Industry, Robert Elleh (middle), G. U. Ake’s PDP faction Organising Secretary, Lucky Ayauwu and former Assembly member, Christian Mba during the senator’s visit to Andoni LGA, recently.

The Senate Special Committee on the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) yesterday, insisted that contrary to denials by the Ministry of Finance, documents before it, showed that more than N500bn was still missing from the fund.
Chairman of the committee, Senator Abdul Ningi, stated this in Abuja while addressing journalists following the non-appearance of the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and her counterpart in the Petroleum Resources Ministry, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, before his committee, despite invitations extended to them.
While Ningi explained that Okonjo-Iweala had duly taken permission in writing over her inability to appear to honour his committee’s invitation because she was representing President Goodluck Jonathan at an international forum in New York, Alison-Madueke neither appeared nor sought permission to be absent.
Ningi said the letter of invitations sent to the two ministers were duly signed by the Vice Chairman, Senator Ganiyu Solomon, for and on behalf of the committee.
He said, “The scheduled meeting was 1pm and we asked the Secretariat to be here by 12.30pm and they were here. Now, this is exactly 17 minutes after 2.00pm; that is one hour 17 minutes. “I thought we have waited patiently, graciously for the Minister. I think that the Ministry of Petroleum Resources is the foundation of the SURE-P and we see that it has something to hide.
“We strongly believe that the documentation that we have received from the Petroleum Resources embarrasses us as a committee. Simple arithmetic and statistics found all through their presentations are full of various contradictions of the statistics provided. “When we found out the contradictions, we said the programme was not being run transparently enough for Nigerians to believe that this is a programme that comes as democratic dividends.
“To see various write-ups on the pages of newspapers, faulting our claims without supplying statistical data. I want to assure Nigerians that we had gone further than saying N500bn is missing,” he added.