The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Betta Edu, unveiled the Federal Government’s ambitious plan to create five million jobs for youths within a five-year period through the N-Power scheme.
This initiative comes on the heels of the temporary suspension of the program, as announced by Edu last week.
Edu emphasised that the government’s strategy involves the creation of one million jobs annually, with the primary goal of rejuvenating the N-Power programme.
The suspension was prompted by the identification of certain irregularities within the scheme.
Consequently, an investigation has been launched to scrutinise the expenditure of funds since the program’s inception. Edu stressed the government’s commitment to reviewing the N-Power programme thoroughly to rebuild public trust in its operations.
“This action (suspension) has become necessary to give room for a detailed investigation into the operations of the N-Power in the last 12 months.”
“The total number of persons enrolled on N-Power since inception to date is 960,000. Most of them have exited from N-Power 1.0 and NPower 2.0 batches A and B.
“There is a need to audit the number of people in the programme, those who have exited the programme, those who are being owed, whether they reported to work or not and how funds have been utilized over this period of time.
“Recently, we discovered instances of programme beneficiaries whose participation has lapsed since 2022 but have remained on and continue to expect payments from the government.
“Some have other jobs and have left this bracket but are still benefiting from the payments, while those who truly worked are not paid. These instances have made the need for a thorough audit imperative, as we also look into claims of those being owed for up to eight to nine months’ stipends to ascertain the veracity of their claims.
“The graduates and non-graduate volunteers Batch C1 & C2 are in this category. We want to establish the exact number of people owed and the total amounts, thereby eliminating ghost beneficiaries.
“Preliminary findings of our audit have shown that some consultants are holding on to beneficiaries’ funds disbursed to them long ago even when their contract ended in March 2023 without any renewal.”
Edu also said the restructuring of the N-Power will birth an expanded programme to reach 5 million beneficiaries aged 18 to 40, unlike the previous age limit that was 35.
“This restructuring and transformation will also birth an expanded programme to reach beneficiaries aged 18-40 (the previous age limit was 35).
“We are targeting 5 million beneficiaries in 5 years at a pace of 1 million per year under the graduate and non-graduate stream.
“To earn the confidence of Nigerians in the expanded programme, transparency and accountability will be the benchmark. It shall no longer be business as usual as we make concerted efforts to put the nation on the right footing, ensuring that no one directly or indirectly unleashes suffering on Nigerians,” she said.