I Resigned Because Of Corruption – Kolade

I Resigned Because Of Corruption – Kolade

Christopher Kolade, ex-chairman of the Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme, has named the reasons why he resigned his position in 2013.

He said the operations of the porgramme were becoming tainted with corruption and politics, thereby losing its credibility.

Kolade, who spoke on Channels Television Programme, “Views From The Top”, added that some officials of the government of ex-president Goodluck Jonathan were practising “something that was lower than the transparency”, expected of an interventionist agency like SURE-P‎.

READ ALSO: SURE-P Chairman Christopher Kolade made the decision to resign

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He said he found out that some of the conclusions the agency was making did not meet up with the standard they had set it up for.

The government realized people would not believe what they were saying,” ex-chairman stated.

“And the President said ‘we need to gain credibility with the people in this programme. So we believe that if you and your committee can manage this thing transparently in accordance with what we agreed, then that credibility will be there’.

“Now that’s fine. But when I discovered that there were individuals in the system that were practicing something that was lower than the transparency that we went in with, I raised the issues. And I discovered that political affiliations and things made this difficult.”

The former SURE-P boss quoted an example when the institution decided to hire 5000 youth from every state of Nigeria.

He said: “We started by saying that we would offer employment to 5000 youths from every state. Of course if you are sitting in Abuja, and you want to identify 5000 youths in all the states, it is difficult unless you involve people who are on the spot.

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“Now, it was the feeling of our committee, led by me, that to identify people in the states, we needed people who were political neutral. In other words, get civil servants to go in there and say according to the criteria you‘ve agreed, these are the 5000 youths from this state. But we were told that would not be acceptable.

So something was set up called State Implementation Committees made up mainly of people with political affiliations with one party or the other. When that was brought into play, I pointed out that I feared this would politicize what we were trying to do.  And that therefore I felt we should take politicians out of this. But I was overruled by those who had the power to overrule me.

“And then, it started happening. I got complaints from Abia state, from Ekiti state  that many of the youths being recruited into the programme were supporters of party A or party B and I went back, and said what I suspected is beginning to happen.

“So we need to kill this thing right away and go back to what we agreed.  Now, somehow, we couldn’t do that.  And for me, if you destroy the foundation on which you are setting up something like that, if you feel that credibility is the key to success in this thing, and then you undermine credibility by politicizing the issues, you are shooting yourself on the foot. And I’m not very good at shooting in the foot because I find out I can’t walk very well after that.”

Kolade left his position as chairman of SURE-P in November 2013, quoting advanced age at the time.

He said having attained 80 years; he wanted to slow on energy-demanding activities.

The SURE-P was mandated to convert saved fuel subsidy money into jobs, roads and other people-oriented programmes.

Source: Legit.ng

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