Chairman of the Subsidy Re-Investment and Empowerment Programme Committee, Dr. Christopher Kolade has declared on Thursday that the intervention body would no longer be able to pay the N10,000 monthly stipends to each beneficiary due to lack of fund.

CEOAFRICA learnt that this statement was made by Kolade while he led other board members to brief the Senate ad-hoc Committee on SURE-P led by Senator Abdul Ningi about the activities of the body since it was inaugurated by President GoodLuck Jonathan.

The renowned technocrat lamented that the inability of his committee to honour its obligations to the 111,000 youths it engaged across the country was because the senate reduced its budget of N27bn meant for that purpose to N9bn.

Although Kolade said the committee had N93bn yet to be spent in its project execution budget, he pointed out that the body was not empowered to divert funds meant for another project.

He lamented that despite the fact that the budget was re-presented following the intervention of the Presidency after the initial reduction by N18bn, the Senate had yet to restore the exact amount presented by the committee, even in the supplementary budget passed recently.

He said the committee proposed to engage 5,000 youths in each of the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory but could only achieve 3,000 each because the funds approved for it did not meet the estimate.