Kaduna State Governor-elect, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai has dragged the outgoing governor, Mukhtar Ramalan Yero to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC over the N2.744 billion Local Government Sure-P funds in Kaduna State
Less than two weeks to the expiration of the present administration, it would be recalled, the governor wrote the State Assembly seeking for approval to expend the N2.744 billion Local Government Sure-P funds. Dissatisfied with the move the governor-elect, asked the EFCC to urgently investigate “whether the Sure-P funds are still intact, or if they have been spent without appropriation thus necessitating a belated approval from the House of Assembly to provide a ‘legal’ means of retiring the funds.”
But, the deputy governor, Amb. Audu Nuhu Bajoga who is the Chairman of the SURE-P Committee in the state, said the petitioner “is just wasting his time.” The Chairman of the APC Transition Committee in the State, Balarabe Abbas Lawal who signed the letter to the EFCC, said he wrote to inform the commission of the “elaborate steps being taken by the outgoing Kaduna State Government to legitimise the misappropriation of N2.744 billion Local Government Sure-P funds, and to request that you exercise your responsibility of deterring crime by preventing this last-minute looting of public assets.”
He recalled that, the Kaduna State House of Assembly declined to appropriate the Sure-P funds in the 2015 budget, and promptly removed them from the budgets submitted by the 23 local government councils, where they resolved that the fate of the funds be left to the incoming administration.”
He told the commission that the outgoing governor, Mukhtar Ramalan Yero, however has been putting the legislature under tremendous pressure to approve his utilization of 50% of the Sure-P funds for a road project, while the 23 local government councils would share the balance.
“Coming from a government whose tenure expires in less than two weeks, the intensity of the lobby for the money indicates a certain desperation that is clearly not in the public interest.
“I wish to therefore request that you urgently investigate whether the Sure-P funds are still intact, or if they have been spent without appropriation thus necessitating a belated approval from the House of Assembly to provide a ‘legal’ means of retiring the funds.
