Vice President Namadi Sambo on Wednesday said the Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) is not a political programme but an empowerment initiative to rapidly improve the socio-economic status of Nigerians.
The vice president, who noted that infrastructure interventions using the SURE-P fund, including over 3,700km of roads across the country, was progressing steadily, adding that some were already being commissioned while others were nearing completion.
He also added that the intervention of the SURE-P in the railways had facilitated the re-commissioning in December 2012 of the Lagos-Kano railway after over 35 years of disrepair.
Sambo stated this during a review meeting of the Community Services Women and Youth Employment (CSWYE) programme with stakeholders from the 36 states of the federation at the State House, Abuja.
The vice president stressed that the impact of the interventions of the SURE-P in the critical sectors of the Nigerian economy had been tremendous both in the infrastructure and social safety net programmes.
Vice President Sambo said that the CSWYE was one of the critical components of the safety net programme of SURE-P, adding that the President Goodluck Jonathan administration holds women and youth in high esteem.
“This programme is for the young men and women of Nigeria, it’s about empowerment; it is about building capacity and creating
opportunities for gainful employment of young people in our various communities to harness their energies and channel them into projects that will enrich their communities.
“We need each and everyone’s cooperation to ensure that this project succeeds -without your full cooperation we cannot achieve that,” he said.
He disclosed that to strengthen the CSWYE for proper coordination, efficiency, transparency, accountability and effectiveness, “the CSWYE Federal Project Implementation Unit has now been moved to the Federal Ministry of Labour, which also supervises the NDE to ensure better coordination of the project since the NDE is the technical implementation organ of the programme.”
TONY AILEMEN, Abuja
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