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Sambo Launches State SURE-P Committees

By on October 31, 2012

VP, Namadi Sambo

The Vice-President Namadi Sambo on Tuesday inaugurated the State Implementation Committees (SICs), the development was prompted by the need to decentralize the activities of the Christopher Kolade-led Subsidy Re-Investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P).

 

At the inaugural workshop of the SICs yesterday in Abuja, Sambo stressed the importance of spreading the reach of the programme and increase the number of those who should benefit from it, adding that their task was to oversee and manage the programme in all the 36 states of the federation.

 

He said the members of the committees were selected based on merit and their integrity, patriotism, empathy for people and the zeal to curb unemployment among youths.

 

He noted that high level of unemployment is one of the worries of the present administration, saying, “It is not acceptable to this administration that a high percentage of our youth remain unemployed and underemployed. This is why our administration has evolved innovative methods of tackling the challenge of unemployment.”

 

Sambo said Members of the SICs, would include civil society organisations, community participants, and Federal Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), whose duty will be to guide the implement the programme at the state level. The partnership between the states and local governments on employment creation will be strengthened by the same process.

 

Sambo explained that “As you have witnessed in recent months, the Youth Enterprise with Innovation in Nigeria (YouWIN!) Programme has been successful in supporting young entrepreneurs to create jobs through a competitive business plan programme that awards grants to winners to expand their businesses and create employment.”

 

Among other benefits, 50,000 graduates will receive one-year training from private companies for a period of one year under the Graduate Internship Programme and assist women in wealth creation.

 

 

He said some of the benefits of the SURE-P are the granting incentives through tax breaks and other mechanisms to companies that “retain these graduates after the internship programmes, Community Services Programme designed to employ 320,000 of our unskilled youth and the effort to build “partnership between the tiers of government on the one hand and across sectors on the other.”

 

“It is imperative for us as a nation to appreciate that no one tier of government can adequately and effectively address the unemployment concerns, hence the need to build stronger partnerships in this regard,” Sambo said.

 

In his words, “each sector in our national economy has a role to play in contributing to job creation. It is in this regard that an Inter-Ministerial Committee has been set up at the Federal level to guide the implementation of the community Services, women, and Youth Employment component, and to strengthen linkages between sectors and amongst all relevant Ministries, Departments, and Agencies at the Federal level.”

 

Expressing hope and optimism he said, the members of the SICs “will live up to the expectations of government and justify the confidence reposed in them by their nomination for this assignment.”

 

He, warned, “Government will not tolerate any act of wrongdoing or corruption in the programme.”

 

“This administration remains committed to delivering the dividends of the partial subsidy removal to the Nigerian people, and I urge that you take appropriate and urgent steps towards meeting the targets set for the year 2012 deliverables for women and youth employment as defined for this project.”