SURE-Programme: So far, how far with N285b savings in the kitty'FOR the month of August, the Federal Ministry of Finance declared that N35.549 billion was realisedand meant for the execution of projects and plans under the Subsidy Reinvestment and EmpowermentProgramme (SURE-P) created by the Federal Government following the controversy that greetedthe partial removal of the petrol subsidy scheme, with the attendant pains and hardship as it forced petrol prices up from N65 to N140 and later reduced to the current N97 a litre.The SURE-Pwas a directpalliate response introduced by the Economic Management to mitigate the pains associated with the subsidy removal which the Team believed was only being enjoyed by a certain privileged class in the Nigerian society - the rich. Under the plan, money saved from subsidy payment would be directed at specific projects such as infrastructure and employment generation to benefit the Nigerian masses.The Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala had been reeling frightening figures that governmentwas spending on petrol subsidy, saying it was not sustainable.'Between 2006 and August 2011, total government expenditure on petroleum subsidy amounted to N3.7 trillion. Expenditure on subsidies increased from N261 billion in 2006 to N673 billion in 2010, which represents an increase of about 160 per cent. Additionally, there have been unprecedented payments in 2011 that so far amounted to N1.4 trillion due, in part, to two key factors: Increase in subsidy per litre as a result of rising global oil price, and large arrears due Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for household kerosene imports,'the Ministerdeclared.Meanwhile, figures obtained by The Guardian in the Federal Ministry of Finance indicate that so far, close to N285 billion has beensaved, pooled and distributed amongst the three tiers of government this year under the programme as sates too were mandated to developed their plans for the implementation of the funds for easy monitoring and evaluation. .Every month, N35.549 billion which has now become a revenue sub-item on the FAAC Distribution Table is put forward and shared amongst the levels of government.But before April 2012, this subsidy revenue was not disaggregated but lumped together with the statutory revenue; Valued Added Tax (VAT) and other incomes generated and shared amongst the three tiers of government. .TheMinister of State, Finance and Chairman of FAAC, Dr. Lawal Yerima Ngawa gave reasons why the account has to be disaggregated:'FAAC has begun the disaggregation of allocations under the subsidy savings regime. In the first three months of the year, we were aggregating all the allocations, but from April this year, we decided that separate accounts be opened for the subsidy savings to enable easy monitoring of the implementation of the programmes under the SURE-P plan. Consequently, states and local councils have been directed to forward their investment plans under this arrangement to FAAC to enable the people know where the subsidy savings were being deployed.'The Federal Government on it's part promised that unlike in the past, it adopted initiatives that were different from previous efforts in meeting the core needs of the people.Again, the Mrs. Okonjo-Iweala added: 'The Federal Government has decided to channel its own share of the budgetary savings from the elimination of fuel subsidy into a combination of specific programmes that will stimulate the economy and alleviate poverty, through the provision of the following:' Critical infrastructure - the proposed infrastructure projects are:'Specifically, TAM for the Port Harcourt Refinery will be carried out in the first Quarter 2012, Niger Delta development projects; road development projects, rail transport projects; water and agriculture development with special attention to irrigation projects; electrical power projects focusing on hydropower, and Greenfield Petroleum sector projects to be located in Bayelsa, Kogi and Lagos states;' Implementation of safety net projects -the planned safety net programmes include maternal and child health services, public works/youth employment programme, urban mass transit scheme, and vocational training schemes.'The Federal Government is launching a SURE Programme that encapsulates all these alleviating programmes. Structures have also been developed to guarantee adequate oversight, accountability, and implementation of the various projects.'Now, eight months into the plan, how much has been achieved of these promises. This was what The Guardian set out to find answers to. But alas, the effort was not rewarding as all the principal officers in the Federal Ministry of Finance could not come up withanswer to our enquiries.BUT to a former deputy president of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Peters Adeyemi, the silence of the Labour Movement which is a member of the SURE-P is worrisome.In an interview with The Guardian in Asaba, venue of the National Executive Council (NEC) meeting of the Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU), Adeyemi berated Labour for participating in entrenching conspiracy of silence on the implementation of the programme.He said: 'Of particular worry is the fact that the Labour Movement is a part of this committee. Whereas nothing is happening and those that represent Labour Movement are not also talking to Nigerians on the level of work that has been done. I think the entire Labour Movement is an accomplice in this game of deceit. Again, this same Labour told us in January that they are not going to serve on the committees that were set up in the aftermath of the protests. Later, they eat their words and decided to serve on the committees without any recourse to their civil society allies. Now eight months after their acceptance to serve, nothing has happened and they keep quite. The truth is that if government said it is going to do this and this and nothing has been done, what has Labour done to ensure the correct thing is done''While agreeing that the Nigerian people may be justified for trusting Labour Movement to protect their interest and ensure the programme runs according to the template, Adeyemi, who is also the General Secretary of NASU said that the way Labour conducted the negotiation during the January protects had long shown the route Labour was likely to tow.He added: 'I am not surprised by the silence of Labour on the slow working of SURE-P. If we look at the way anti-subsidy protests were aborted in January by Labour, then no Nigerians should be surprised. The latter-day Labour gladiators have shown that they lack the capacity, understanding and sagacity to take this struggle through. We should not forget that in January this year, Labour insisted on N65 per litre of petrol only for them to turn around to accept N97 per litre. Because of their lack of capacity, they aborted the struggle at the point where we would have gotten government to reverse back to N65 or negotiate something far below N97.'Adeyemi explained that by now, government ought to have come out to state how much it has collected and what it has done with the money realized so that Nigerians will be in a position to assess government performance.The NASU scribe noted that the differential of N32 on every litre of fuel bought in Nigeria since January presupposes that government must have raked in billion of Naira that can significantly refurbish the decaying infrastructure in the country.'Without doubt, government intention in that respect was not fully realised in that the removal of subsidy was not realised but an increment on the price of fuel from N65 to N97. But again, if we do arithmetic of that, there is an increment of N32 on every litre of fuel bought in Nigeria. Even if we consume about 30 million litres per day, this will give government huge resources to tackle the infrastructural decay in the country. But instead of witnessing an improvement on the infrastructure across Nigeria, especially by road, it is obvious that nothing has changed since this SURE-P was introduced several months ago,' he submitted.Adeyemi also traced the on-going disagreement between marketers and government to the failure to make the four refineries work at optimum capacity.Though he lauded Chief Emeka Anyaoku for spearheading the private sector involvement in refining petroleum products domestically, he was quick to point out that government owes Nigerians a duty to return the ailing refineries to full-scale production.Added: 'All the four refineries we have in the country are still not working near their capacities. Efforts at encouraging the involvement of the private sector in the building of refineries have not yielded any fruit except the effort by Emeka Anyaoku's Orient Oil. Because there is no functional refinery, marketers are utilising the lacuna to make money off the collective miseries of the Nigerian people. Therefore, the SURE-P at the level of Federal Government, it has not worked and at the level of state governments, it seems not feasible. This is because when this money is collected, the Federal will take its own and the states will equally take theirs. No Nigerian has ever heard any state government talking about SURE-P. So, how can that work' To me, this SURE-P thing is like another government magic.'Adeyemi also expressed worry that the Chairman of the committee, Dr. Christopher Kolade is no longer talking, saying: 'Many Nigerians believe that the government should be briefing them on regular basis on its activities.'He also cited the worthy example of the defunct Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), which had some of its interventions visible in most parts of the country.'Let us go memory lane. In the days of the PTF, Nigerians saw its interventions everywhere ' schools, hospitals and roads. Conversely, the intervention of this SURE-P, no one has seen it almost eight months after it was decreed into existence. Because we have not seen anything on the ground to show, this SURE-P is a deceit,' he stated.However, The Guardian learnt that as part of the fulfillment of the programme to mitigate the spate of youth unemployment in the country through the SURE-P funds, the Federal Government has initiated the graduate internship scheme under the social safety net componentof SURE-P.Under the scheme, which has the objective to create opportunities for unemployed graduates to be engaged for a period of one year in reputable firms and institutions, to enable them acquire skills and experience and enhance their employability. The scheme would be a form of partnership with firms and institutions in which they get free labour and undertake to groom and mentor the interns to acquire skills on the job experience while government pays stipends to the interns. This will help equip graduates towards meeting the demands of employers in the current labour market. Interns would be deployed to firms and institutions in their areas of residence for convenience, and deployed according to the relevance of their discipline to the firms.THE Finance Minister had maintained that subsidy removal in the country was the best thing to happen to Nigeria because besides saving financial resources that would be deploy to other critical areas, it would also spur investment in the downstream sector of the economy.On the demand by organised Labour that local refineries be repaired before implementing the deregulation programme, the Minister thinks differently as she argues: 'Inthe last 12 months, the country's refineries have worked relatively well, and this has led to increased capacity utilisation from 30 per cent to the current 60 per cent. This means that for 12 months now, the country's refined petroleum production capacity has been steadily on the increase. To further improve on this to an internationally accepted level of 90 per cent capacity utilisation in the next 24 months, the original contractors responsible for building the refineries have been contracted to carry out a Turnaround Maintenance (TAM). This would be followed by the Kaduna Refinery and then the Warri Refinery. Thereafter, the normal cycle of TAM will be respected.'She pointed out that research and analysis show that even if all the country's refineries were to operate at full capacity, there would still be a petrol supply gap of 15 million litres a day, hence importation will remain inevitable until additional refining capacities are built through the on-going Greenfield Refinery Project.The three tiers of government earned a total of N71.10 billion from the increase in fuel pump price in January between April and June 2012.The sum was the amount distributed as the SURE-P, among the three tiers of government and the 13 per cent Derivation Fund.While the Federal Government collected N32.59 billion, state governments received N16.53 billion and local councils got N12.74 billion, while N9.24 billion went to the 13 per cent Derivation Fund.According to the 2012 second quarter review of the economy by Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), N56.45 billion was also shared among the three tiers of government as exchange rate gain. As a result, the Federal Government got N15.09 billion; states, N22.58 billion; local councils, N11.64 billion and 13 per cent Derivation Fund, N7.34 billion.After a refund of some funds by the NNPC before the second quarter sharing, the total allocation to the three tiers of government amounted to N1.739 billion. N71.10 billion was also distributed as the SURE-P, among the three tiers of government and the 13 per cent Derivation Fund - Federal Government, N32.59 billion; state governments, N16.53 billion; local councils, N12.74 billion and 13 per cent Derivation fund, N9.24 billion.IN its efforts to improve maternal and child health (MCH) in the country, the Federal Government has set aside N15 billion for the training of midwives and upgrading of primary healthcare facilities across the six geo-political zones of the country under the Subsidy Re-investment Programme (SURE-P).The Executive Director of National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr. Ado Mohammed Jimada who disclosed this in Minna on Monday at the flag off, of the first orientation exercise for midwives and community health workers from the North Central Zone said that already N3 billion has been released for the take of the programme.The executive director who was represented at the event by the national coordinator of SURE-P, Dr. Ugo Okoli disclosed that about 2,000 midwives across the six geo-political zones were currently undergoing orientation exercise, adding that the decision by the Federal Government to invest this huge amount on the primary healthcare was borne out of its renewed efforts to halt the dismal figures in maternal and child health in the country.According to Muhammad, the Subsidy Programme for Maternal and Child Health (SURE-P/MCH) is an innovative multi-pronged approach to dramatically improve the health outcomes of women and children in rural communities in a renewed bid to accelerate progress in the attainment of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5.The Federal Government last Tuesday announced that the Lagos-Kano railway line would resume full operations in six weeks after two years of suspended rail transport activities.The announcement is contained in a statement issued by Mrs. Mary Ikoku, Head of Communications, SURE-P in Abuja.The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) suspended operations on the route when Akerri Bridge linking the North and South of Nigeria was washed away by floods.The statement said officials of SURE-P, NRC and Project Implementation Unit of the Federal Ministry of Transport had carried out a thorough inspection of all train stations across the country.It said Chika Okogwu, the official who led the team of inspectors, stressed the urgent need to get the railways working again to achieve one of President Goodluck Jonathan's transformation agenda.Okogwu commended the Federal Government for intervening in the project and assured Nigerians that the bridge would be opened in six weeks and the rail lines opened for goods and passengers to move freely again.In a related development, Eric Onyeiwu, Chairman of the Project Implementation Unit of the Federal Ministry of Transport, expressed satisfaction with the level of work accomplished.The officials, however, complained about the slow pace of work by some contractors on the site contracted to ESSER Nig. Limited at Asa community in Abia.The committee started off its visit from Lagos and went through Port Harcourt, Aba, Makurdi, Lafia, Kafanchan and Gombe.Other sites visited were Akerri Bridge and Bridge 73, near Minna in Niger.Chairman, SURE-P, Dr. Christopher Kolade, said the gains of the programme were evident in its investments in mass transit, road construction, maternal and child healthcare delivery services and pledged that the committee is poised to enforce strict implementation of its mandate.He said so far, the SURE-P has made significant progress focused on delivery of projects as indicated in the recent 2012 approved budget.According to the statement, Kolade further said: 'We are going beyond rhetoric to execute the mandate of making sure that the money budgeted is used to alleviate the immediate impact of petroleum subsidy discontinuation on Nigerians, accelerate economic transformation through investment in critical infrastructure projects so as to drive economic growth and achieve Vision 20:2020 and lay a foundation for the successful development of a national safety-net programme that is better targeted at the poor and most vulnerable on a continuous basis.'He also said the Committee is focused on 'making things happen, with the citizens as the targets for the projects service delivery since they paid the sacrifice for the subsidy money.' He added that its primary focus was currently projects execution.'Part of the projects that have started is the provision of public mass transit service, construction and maintenance of roads, provision of maternal and child healthcare service especially in rural areas and vocational training centres.'We have set up an international metrics for monitoring, measuring and evaluating each project executed based on the Poverty and Social Impact Analyses (PSIA).'He, however, noted that due to the partial removal of the fuel subsidy, the Federal Government budget for SURE-P had been scaled down to N180 billion in the 2012 budget.Kolade deployed a number of his team members to inspect on-going projects and also advise the committee on areas it will lend its support.Led by two board members of SURE-P, Kiri Mohammed and Okogwu, the chairman of Special Project Implementation Unit of the Federal Ministry of Transport, Eric Onyeiwu, an engineer, the team started their inspection tour from Ebute Metta terminal through Ibadan, Ilorin, Minna and Kaduna.
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