Please probe Yero--APC Transition Committee Asks EFCC

                   The Kaduna APC Transition Committee has asked the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to probe what it described as the last-minute looting of the state’s treasury by the outgoing Governor, Mukhtar Yero.
The APC caucus in the State House of Assembly had earlier blown the lid on an alleged plot by the Peoples Democratic Party-led government of Yero to defraud the state government of N2.744bn SURE-P funds.


The cacaus had  desrcibed as “an act of last-minute looting” Yero’s decision to appropriate the 2014 SURE-P funds to the 24 local government areas in the state.

Also, the State Governor-elect, Malam Nasir el-Rufai had vowed that government would punish anyone found culpable in the N2.744bn SURE-P fund after May 29.

Specifically, the transition committee, in a petition, entitled ‘The attempt to misappropriate SURE-P Funds in Kaduna State’, a copy of which was obtained by our correspondent in Kaduna on Tuesday, argued that it was baffled that less than two weeks to the May 29 handover date, Yero had continued to mount pressure on the state legislators to approve the N2.744bn.
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The Chairman,  APC Kaduna Transition Committee, Malam Balarabe Abbas-Lawal, who signed the petition to the EFCC, noted that the desperation of the outgoing  governor  over the N2.744bn SURE-P fund called for concern and requested the anti-graft agency to carry out investigation into the matter.

The petition, dated May 13, read, “I write to bring to your attention the elaborate steps being taken by the outgoing Kaduna State Government to legitimise the misappropriation of N2.744 billion Local Government SURE-P funds, and to request that you exercise your responsibility of deterring crime by preventing this last-minute looting of public assets.

“The Kaduna State House of Assembly declined to appropriate the SURE-P funds in the 2015 budget, and promptly removed them from the budgets submitted by the 23 local government areas. The state legislators further resolved that the fate of the funds be left to the incoming administration.

“The outgoing governor, Mukhtar Yero, however has been putting the legislature under tremendous pressure to approve his utilisation of 50% of the SURE-P funds for a road project, while the 23 local government areas will share the balance.

“Coming from a government, whose tenure expires in less than two weeks, the intensity of the lobby for the money indicates a certain desperation that is clearly not in the public interest.

“I wish to therefore request that you urgently investigate whether the SURE-P funds are still intact, or if they have been spent without appropriation, thus necessitating a belated approval from the House of Assembly to provide a ‘legal’ means of retiring the funds.”