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President Bola Tinubu
By Linus Ogbu, Lafia
A former lawmaker of Nasarawa State House Assembly, Dr Muhammad Kassim has urged President Bola Tinubu to create monitoring and implementation units across the States to monitor programmes and interventions of the Federal Government.
Dr Kassim who is presently serving as Special Adviser on Political Affairs to Gov. Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa State made the appeal on Saturday in Lafia.
He said he was deeply worried that despite the huge amount of money the federal government committed to various programmes it has no monitoring and implementation unit to oversee the effective utilisation of the funds.
“To be explicit, Mr President, I am deeply worried that despite the huge amount of money your administration has sunk into various programs of the federal government, including the billions distributed to states due to the hardship Nigerians are going through.
“Your government has not put in place a Monitoring and Implementation Unit to go round the country and oversee the execution of these funds.
“I am fully aware of the challenges since your assumption of power.
“Most Nigerians have been very unfair in their assessment of the situation, as it is obvious that you inherited a sick economy,” he said.
Dr Kassim also made a case for the recovery of the federal government empowerment initiatives funds that laid fallow in the banks as 40 percent of the beneficiaries were unable to assess the funds due to their irregular Bank verification numbers (BVN).
“So many empowerment initiatives and Special Public Works empowerment programs under the Buhari’s administration, where 1,000 youths per local government across the 774 local governments in Nigeria were targeted, with billions sunk into these programmes.
“The said money is still hanging in the various banks, as 40% of the entire beneficiaries across the country were not able to make withdrawals of that money after payments were made due to irregular BVN/NIN match on their names.
“As the state coordinator of that programme in Nasarawa State, several attempts I made to ensure that beneficiaries received the funds.
“This was a similar story across the country, and this is an area where a Project Monitoring and Implementation Unit of the Presidency can help recover such money, which is in billions from the banks back to the federal government account,” he said.
On the recovery of looted funds, he said the funds should be directed towards specific, transparent, and impactful projects that directly benefit the indigenous populations of the states from which they were stolen.
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