The Presidential Committee on Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme on Tuesday briefed President Goodluck Jonathan on its activities for 2012.
Fielding questions from State House correspondents, the Chairman of the committee, Dr. Christopher Kolade, said they spent N70 billion on various projects during the period July to December.
Kolade noted that though the committee was inaugurated in February 2012, it did not receive fund until July when the execution of projects took-off.
The SURE-P committee was set up as an aftermath of the nationwide protest that greeted the sudden removal of fuel subsidy on January 1, 2012.
Kolade, a former Nigerian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, said the committee was able to record modest achievements within six months of its operation in line with its mandate.
He said: “It was in February last year that the SURE-P committee was inaugurated.
“Having worked through the rest of 2012, it was good time to come and give the President a report of our activities in that year, especially as we have now started a new year.
“This meeting was to give the President the annual report of SURE-P for the year 2012.
“We are here to tell the President that we have been doing the work that he expected us to do according to the mandate.
“There are different areas of work, infrastructure, building roads, rails, mass transit and also maternal and child healthcare.
“We have been active in all those areas and we gave the President an update of what we have done.
“In some of those areas, and we can actually point to a lot of thousands of young Nigerians that are now benefitting from the employment programme, from the vocational training programme, from the graduate internship scheme.
“So that was what the report was about.
“We are very satisfied with our performance in the last one year.
“Although we were inaugurated in February, we did not get the first release of funds to our committee until July.
“So the first six months of the year had passed.
“In the remaining six months of the year, we actually did work to the tune of over N70 billion.
“If we had N180 billion for the whole year and we spent N70 billon plus in six months, it means that we worked at the rate we were supposed to work.
“You know that the beginning of something new is bound to take off slowly, it cannot suddenly start running.
“It was a normal start and it was accelerating as we went through the year.”
Reacting to the call by some members of the National Assembly that the programme be scrapped since it seems to duplicate the responsibilities of the MDAs, Kolade insisted the SURE-P was adding value to the infrastructures already on ground.
He explained further: “That is their opinion.
“Any Nigerian can have an opinion about this.
“What people need to do is to study what is going on and see in what ways SURE-P is adding value to what is already on ground.
“Nobody is denying that Ministries, Departments and Agencies are working.
“That is what government is there for.
“But the President, when he saw that there were going to be special fund from the subsidy withdrawal, then decided that he would use this fund in a special way to intervene so that if for instance road contract was awarded say 2006 and it is still not finished but by putting some funds from SURE-P, you can accelerate the finishing of that road.
“These are special funds and they are special intervention funds.
“They can not be compared with what is ongoing in the ministries because ministries are doing their normal work.
“For example, the railway system, for years now, it has not been possible to move from Lagos to Kano entirely by rail because there were gaps on the way.
“But with these special intervention funds in 2012, SURE-P went and constructed the bridges where they are broken down, repair the roads where they should be repaired and now since end of November, it is possible to ride on a train from Lagos to Kano.
“That was not happening before.
“We are even told by a cement company that they are shipping their cement in bulk by rail from Ewekoro all the way to Minna.
“That is adding value and it doesn’t disturb the normal work of Nigeria Railway Corporation.”
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