Senate condemns handling of N1.4bn SURE-P funds by Okonjo-Iweala

    
The Senate on Wednesday condemned the alleged mismanagement of N1.4bn fund for the implementation of the Graduate Internship Scheme under the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme being supervised by the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

The Chairman, Senate special adhoc committee on the SURE-P, Senator Abdul Ningi, who stated this during a meeting with officials of the agency, described the GIS as illegal.

He also alleged that the scheme was a way of diverting government money.

Ningi, who walked out the representative of the ministry at the meeting, vowed not to appropriate anything for the GIS  in 2014 budget.

He added that the ministry did not have the capacity of running such scheme and promised to talk with the President on that matter.

The Adhoc Committee had in November opened an investigation into the expenditure of N1.4 bn on the Internship Graduate Scheme which is under the supervision of  Okonjo-Iweala.

No specific date was given by the senators for the minister to appear before them but they  they  requested her to furnish them with the list of all beneficiaries of the scheme, their locations and contact addresses among others.

In a letter addressed to the  minister by the committee, the panel said the ministry expended the said amount between April 2012 to April 2013.