By: Sunday Oyewole
Again, a whopping sum of N500 billion due for release to the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) for execution of its various projects might be missing.
The Senate Committee on SURE-P Tuesday, uncovered that instead of N800 billion due for release to the programme since inception, only N300 billion has been released, leaving tongues wagging on the whereabouts of the balance of N500 billion.
Kabiru Marafa, a member of the Senate Committee on SURE-P said the committee had requested the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to supply it with the record of fuel it supplied for consumption since the inception of SURE-P in 2012 which was 21 months (January 2012 to September 30, 2013.)
From the Ministry’s response, about 25 billion litres of PMS (fuel) was supplied within the period under review.
Marafa said going by simple calculation, multiplying the N32 SURE-P component of oil subsidy by the 25 billion litres of PMS the Ministry supplied simply translates to N800 billion to date, wondering where the remaining N500 billion is being kept and for what purpose.
His words, “The committee wrote to the NNPC to ascertain the quantity of fuel sold from when the Subsidy programme started till date. NNPC gave us the quantity sold from January 2012 and September 2013, covering 21 months.
“If you add everything together, it will amount to about 25 billion litres and if you multiply 25 billion litre by N32.00, you get about N800bn. What SURE – P Coordinators told us when they appeared before us was that they had so far collected about N300bn since the subsidy regime started.
“The SURE – P team led by Mr. Christopher Kolade, said they were receiving N15bn flat rate every month. If you multiply 21 months by N15bn, it will be about N350bn. What we are asking is what happened to the over N500bn difference. That is what we ask the NNPC to come and tell us.
“We were also disappointed that the CBN was not here because they are the custodian of the fund. They should come account for how they came about the N15bn they were remitting every month when it was not the same quantity of fuel they sell every month.
“The figure cannot be a flat rate. Based on the figure which the ministry supplied, in January this year, the nation consumed about 1.3bn litre of petrol but it had dropped to 770, 695, 645 in September 2013.”
“We are curious to know what happened to the N500 billion. We also want to know why CBN has been remitting N15 billion to SURE-P monthly. This is because the releases to SURE-P should have varied according to PMS consumption but we hear that N15 billion is remitted to SURE-P monthly,” the committee member lamented.
