Several transition committee chairmen in the twenty-five local government areas of Delta State have accused Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of using the Subsidy Re-investment Program (SURE-P) funds meant for the councils to trade with banks.
Several transition committee chairmen in the twenty-five local government areas of Delta State have accused Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan of using the Subsidy Re-investment Program (SURE-P) funds meant for the councils to trade with banks.
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Some of the council chairmen, angry over what they called an unnecessary delay in the release of the funds, told SaharaReporters that the governor has failed to release funds SURE-P funds to them to use in pertinent projects.
The council chairmen alleged that the governor deposits the funds into some banks for several months to yield interest that they believe Mr. Uduaghan then pockets.
“The Federal government releases the funds every month along with every other allocation accruing to the local and state governments. As soon as the allocations get to the state, the governor will release them to the councils though with massive deductions. But the SURE-P funds he will lodge into an unknown bank account to yield bountiful interest for several months. And when releasing the funds at last, the interest goes straight into his private pockets. This has been going on since the SURE-P came to be,” a spokesman for a group of the council chairmen alleged.
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He added that the interest accruing on the deposits should go to local government councils, not to the state governor.
The council chairmen also accused the state governor of making illegal deductions from their normal monthly allocations as well as leaving the responsibility for paying a huge chunk of primary school teacher salaries to them.
“The state government’s contributions to the primary school teachers’ salaries are not up to 30%, but at every opportunity [Governor Uduaghan] will shout at the top of his voice that the state is footing the bulk of the teachers’ salaries. We challenge him to come before the public with facts and figures that we council chairmen receive the actual normal monthly allocations as released from the federal government and to show the public with facts and figures the actual monthly contributions to the primary school teachers’ salaries. We are really sick and tired of all these corrupt practices going on.”
One of the chairmen said, “We recently went for a meeting Governor Uduaghan called. A few of us approached him about the SURE-P funds, especially the unnecessary and continuous delay. We [had] heard that the funds were to be released sometime between November and December last year, but all of a sudden we never heard anything again. Guess the surprise response the governor gave to us? He told us in pidgin, ‘Una don spoil me tire, una don tire abi? When una dey talk say I be bad and wicked man everywhere, una don tire, so una need the money abi, for what? Abeg make una talk another matter jare.’ And that was how the issue died immediately.”
The source added: “We have been trying to tread with caution as far as the issue of the SURE-P funds are concerned because we are always threatened with dissolution and we have no option than to maintain our cool, but we discovered that the more we keep our cool the more things get out of hands. However, this time around we have decided that let the worst happen. After all we were given only six months and we have spent over a year now in office.”
One of the chairmen alleged that the governor was amassing a huge cash to pay for his senatorial ambition in 2015.
The council chairmen said that the governor’s desire to keep reaping huge interests from SURE-P funds was perhaps the reason for his reluctance to hold local government elections.
“Just calculate how much interest the SURE-P funds must have yielded since the program commenced. We are talking of billions of naira interest here,” one of the council men said.
At a press conference held at Government House, Asaba on Thursday, Mr. Uduaghan reacted furiously to the allegation that he was filching SURE-P funds. He said that, unless the names of the chairmen who made the allegation were revealed, he would have no option than to dissolve the councils.
Mr. Uduaghan challenged the council chairmen to come forward with details of any unknown accounts where the SURE-P funds are allegedly been kept. He added that the SURE-P funds had created a series of crises in the councils because of mismanagement.
A source at Government House, Asaba told SaharaReporters that Mr. Uduaghan was irate that the disaffected local government chairmen had taken their case to SaharaReporters. “His Excellency has said he must summon them over their decision to go to [SaharaReporters],” the source said.
Last year, some heads of personnel management (HPM) as well as several chairmen of local government councils in Delta State had accused the state’s commissioner of local government affairs, Newworld Safugha, of demanding and receiving millions of naira in kickbacks.
The officials told our correspondent that the commissioner routinely demands monthly kickbacks from the local councils’ monthly allocations. “Any council that fails to oblige will see pepper,” one of the local government transitional chairmen.
A source also told SaharaReporters, “In those days when HPMs were overseeing the councils before inauguration of transition committee chairmen last year, the chairman of Local Government Service Commission, Ms. Nkem Okuofor, was always collecting kickbacks from HPMs across the state as soon allocations came.”
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