Senate Quizzes FCT Minister BALA MOHAMMED Over N500m NYSC Project, Others

The Senate, through its Ad-hoc Committee on Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme, SURE-P, yesterday, tackled the FCT Minister, Bala Mohammed, for allegedly injecting N500 million on rehabilitation of National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, camp in Abuja.
The upper chamber equally asked the minister and top management staff of the FCT to explain how they used N140 million to maintain new buses said to have been procured and donated to SURE-P beneficiaries by FCT administration.
This is even as the Senator Abdul Ningi-led committee frowned at the minister for alleged release of N1 billion to Abuja Investment Company, AIC, when the agency, it noted, was solely established for generation of income for the FCT administration.
Following the inability of the minister and his staff to provide satisfactory answers, the committee, through its chairman, demanded that details of allocation, receipts and payment made with the SURE-P funds, which accrued to it since 2012, be forwarded to it.
Members of the committee wondered why N500 million would be spent to rehabilitate the NYSC camp in Abuja when the agency was being taken care of financially by the Federal Government.
Mohammed was specifically asked to justify the approval of N140 million to refurbish new buses bought in 2012 by the Federal Government less than one year after the buses were purchased.
The minister promised to forward statement of accounts and backlog of current account balance to the Senate.
Defending his alleged use of N1 billion to pay Abuja Investment Company, Bala said the firm was registered under the Company and Allied Matter Act, hence the ministry went through the company to procure vehicles under the mass transit scheme.
He said the money would be recovered given that beneficiaries have accounts and sureties.
He said: “They are already paying back. Banks already approaching us and promised us additional N1.1 billion loan because we have a system that is working.”
He also added that the rehabilitation of the NYSC followed due process.
He said additional 100 new buses would be bought because the ones on the fleet of his ministry’s mass transit scheme were already breaking down and that another N100 million lifeline was needed to help the operators build capacity. [Vanguard]