Rev. Tor Uja, the Executive Secretary, Nigerian Christian Pilgrim Commission (NCPC), has alleged that the ‘Support A Pilgrim To Israel’ (SAPTI), initiative inflicted a N200million debt on the commission.
Uja made the allegation in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria on Thursday in Abuja.
NAN reports that SAPTI was jointly initiated by the National Lottery Commission and the NCPC to enable as many intending pilgrims as possible participate through the N500 per ticket lottery system.
NAN reports that SAPTI, formally known as ‘Win A Trip To Israel’ (WATTI), was formed on April. 9, 2015, through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), NCPC signed with its initiators.
The NCPC, the National Lottery Regulatory Commission (NLRC) and the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), first came up with the Win a Trip to Israel (WATTI) Promo before its transition to SAPTI.
They came up with the idea to give Christians the opportunity to go to the Holy Land at no cost to the Federal or State Governments through the sales of tickets.
The executive secretary, however, said SAPTI was not organised and implemented in accordance with the ideal for which it was established.
“It was a programme designed to move away from the Federal Government yet the launching was purely done with the government; so whatever the government could not do SAPTI could not do.
“It is the operators and a Christian group that will manage SAPTI and signal it to their accounts so NCPC does not know what is in the account.
“We have called for a stakeholders meeting of all the operators so that we will do some reconciliation to know what is there and what is not there.
“Even the operators, who are supposed to sell tickets, have come back to us that they have spent money and that we should pay them.
“That was not supposed to be the arrangement. Because it was not well done, that was why there was confusion,’’ he said.
Ujah, however, said that SAPTI was an otherwise noble project that was improperly executed by those charged with that responsibility.
According to Uja, SAPTI may not resume its activity before April because “we are re-working it in many areas.
“The arrangements were not proper and the funding did not come from SAPTI.
“First of all the SAPTI agreement that was on ground was a dysfunctional one.
“Everything they did that time only led to debts. I have debts of almost 200 million from SAPTI and the debts are still there because it was not properly organised and not properly implemented.
“It is N500 per ticket and by the time you get 2,000 tickets to be able to select one winner it becomes a challenge.
“Nowhere that they launched SAPTI they did sell close to 1000 tickets even though they did draws and we sponsored those people to go on pilgrimage at our expenses just to justify SAPTI,’’ he said.
He explained that the commission had called on stakeholders for a reconciliation meeting to decide the way forward.
He said that the commission was on the verge of re-defining SAPTI by involving Christian groups and also change the banking system so as to have access and knowledge of the funds.
“We want to re-engineer SAPTI; we will increase the price of the ticket, we want it among Christian groups and churches and not with the government.
“I will also change the banking system so that we have access and knowledge of what happens with the funds and be able to promptly give account to people.
`We are going to break it into different groups so that there will be a group that will buy ticket for N2,500, N10,000, N50,000 and some for N100,000,’’ Uja said. (NAN)
