The Lagos camp of the Subsidy Re-investment Programme (SURE-P) has been deserted, with thousands of job seekers in the SURE-P/FERMA employment scheme calling on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) to investigate the over N463 million job scam perpetrated by SURE-P officials and the training personnel who paraded themselves with the name, “SURE-P/FERMA Federal Task Force,” while working on behalf of the federal government.
When LEADERSHIP visited the camp which is located at the former toll gate, Magodo, Lagos, yesterday, the place was deserted, with even members of the SURE-P/FERMA Federal Task Force who were anchoring the training programme nowhere to be found.
LEADERSHIP gathered that about 10,000 Lagos residents registered for the employment programme. The job seekers paid N32,500, N2,000 and N1,800 each for uniforms, SURE-P labelled polo shirts and face caps respectively. The job seekers also paid N10,000 each for registration forms even though the forms came with a bold inscription, “This form is not for sale.”
With the 10,000 job seekers registered with SURE-P, about N463 million may have been collected from these cadets who have been undergoing training in the last few years.
We paid all interns registered under the programme – SURE-P
However, SURE-P’s spokesman, Mr Suleiman Haruna said the agency paid all interns registered under the programme.
He explained that where there were complaints of non-payment, employers of the interns wrote to SURE-P and such complaints were always resolved.
He, however, noted that the SURE-P employment programme was anchored by FERMA (Federal Roads Maintenance Agency), which was supposed to pay them the training allowance.
“We don’t owe anyone in SURE-P. The SURE-P/FERMA programme in Lagos belongs to FERMA. How we operate is that we have employers who engage the interns, but we pay the interns through the employers,” he said.
When contacted, the FERMA’s spokesperson, Hajia Maryam Sanusi said she would get back to our correspondent, but did not do so till the time of filing in this report.
Most of the victims who spoke with LEADERSHIP in Lagos called on the EFCC and the ICPC to investigate the allegations of extortion and swindling perpetrated at the SURE-P employment camp.
“We want the EFCC and the ICPC to investigate the activities of the SURE-P/FERMA federal task force and bring culpable officers of SURE-P to book. We lost so much to the programme: we lost our precious time; we lost so much money, even as job seekers. These dubious elements were busy taking advantage of our joblessness to swindle us,” said a trainee who pleaded anonymity for safety reasons.
It was gathered that many of the job seekers stopped coming for training before the 2015 general elections.
“I have not been there since February. I had to abandon the programme because nothing was coming out of it,” said Miss John Eneh, a graduate of Business Administration from the Benue State Polytechnic, who joined the programme in July 2014 after paying N10,000 for registration.
“I got tired of that job stuff. I think the government was just using it to deceive Nigerians that it was doing something about employment creation. “It was a big scam that the EFCC must investigate. The matter must not be swept under the carpet,” said John Baki, a Kogi State native residing in Lagos.
The job seekers comprising graduates of tertiary institutions, ordinary diploma holders and secondary school leavers started receiving paramilitary training under the SURE-P employment programme since 2012 when the programme was set up.
The intervention was established for the purpose of re-investing the fund saved from fuel subsidy into critical basic infrastructure.
But the SURE-P, in collaboration FERMA, later delved into employment creation for youths, with the federal government claiming it had created about two million jobs through the SURE-P employment initiative.
A former chairman of SURE-P, Christopher Kolade, had said in 2013 that there were 111,000 youths on the programme’s payroll by the end of September that year.
According to the Lagos coordinator of the programme, Mr Abdulrasak Kolawole Rafiu, those trained under the SURE-P/FERMA collaboration would be employed by the federal government to “control traffic on federal roads, as well as protect federal government installations on the roads.”
However, despite government claims of employing hundreds of thousands of the job seekers and about N880 billion allocated to the SURE-P between 2012 and 2014, a LEADERSHIP investigation in February 2015 revealed that virtually all job seekers who registered for employment in Lagos did not get jobs. They were also not paid a kobo of the N10,000-N15,000 promised them as training allowance per month.
Investigations also revealed the extortion of between N10,000 and N100,000 from the desperate job seekers by officers bearing the name of SURE-P/FERMA federal task force.
The training coordinator, Mr Abdulrasak Kolawole Rafiu, also known as Otto, confirmed the extortion allegation, blaming it on touts “planted by opposition” to tarnish the image and the good works of the federal government.
He, however, did not give further details on the structure or level of employment the programme would offer, but said the cadets’ future was guaranteed since they were under the federal government’s employ.
A total sum of N268.37 billion for various social safety net programmes and infrastructure projects was voted for SURE-P in the 2014 budget. The federal government had said “so far, N208.3 billion, or a very robust 78 per cent of this amount, has been spent on various job creation initiatives and infrastructure projects.”
“Job creation efforts under SURE-P are doing well with the Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS) hiring and deploying 13,339 graduates so far and the Community Services, Women and Youth Employment (CSWYE) creating nearly 120,000 jobs for youth with a minimum of 3,000 in each state and the FCT,” the minister of finance and coordinating minister of the economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala had said during her 2015 budget presentation speech.
For 2015, the sum of N102.5 billion is earmarked as the SURE-P budget. This sum is made up of the federal government’s share of N53 billion from the savings from the partial removal of subsidy on petrol, augmented by the estimated unspent balance of about N49.5 billion in 2014.
The government voted N273.522m for the programme in 2013, while the projected funding for 2015 and 2016 is fixed at N180bn for each year.
The federal government pledged to sustain the intervention scheme aimed at managing and re-investing its share of the savings from the partial removal of subsidies on petroleum products.
Despite this, the job seekers’ training allowance did not come, while the ultimate promise and goal of getting jobs remained vague.
