Senate Asks Buhari To Probe Jonathan’s SURE-P

The Senate on Wednesday urged President Muhammadu Buhari to hold his predecessor, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, accountable for every amount of money spent by his administration on the Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) as well as other poverty alleviation programmes.

The resolution to hold Jonathan accountable for SURE-P fund was predicated on a prayer introduced by Senator Babajide Omoworare (APC, Osun State) to the motion moved by Senator Albert Akpan (PDP, Akwa Ibom) in which he (Akpan) expressed grave concerns about the soaring unemployment rate in Nigeria, stressing that unemployment has become a time bomb that required prompt intervention of government.

In his motion, Akpan had observed that the recent statistics on unemployment situation in Nigeria by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) revealed how the unemployment rate had increased to 8.2 percent in the second quarter of 2015 from 7.5 percent recorded in the first quarter of the year and 6.4 percent in the last quarter of 2014.

He said: “The latest statistics as released by the Bureau reveals that economically active population or working age comprising Nigerians within the age range of 15 to 64, are now 103.5 million, increasing from 102.8 million in the last quarter of 2014, while the unemployed labour force now stands at 74 million Nigerian youths. This is truly a calamity,” he noted.

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