N-Power – The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation of the Government of Nigeria, Mrs. Betta Edu, has announced the indefinite suspension of the N-Power Programme.
This decision comes in response to a cascade of irregularities and mismanagement discovered within the program, which was initially designed to alleviate poverty and address youth unemployment.
Mrs. Betta Edu, who recently assumed her position as minister, revealed that upon her arrival, she found numerous discrepancies within the N-Power Programme. During her tenure, a swift effort was made to address these issues, with approximately 20,000 individuals out of the 360,000 intended beneficiaries receiving payments.
According to her,
“We had to go into further investigations as to why Nigerians, young Nigerian who put in their efforts were not paid when you have the money sitting there. Infact, I arrived and the week I arrived as minister, they quickly rush to pay 20,000 out of the number of persons they were supposed to cover which was about 360000 persons. They paid 20,000 and the next week they said they wanted to pay another 40,000, and the question was, why are you paying them in tricles, when you have monies enough to pay everybody you owe for a certain amount of months, and so all of these were all the grey areas we had with the Npower”
The N-Power Programme, originally established during the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari, aimed to provide monthly stipends of N30,000 to beneficiaries and offer capacity building, targeted employment, and career path development for unemployed Nigerian youths, predominantly graduates.
As of February this year, the program had enrolled 200,000 youths in Batch A, 300,000 in Batch B, 510,000 in Batch C1, and 490,000 in Batch C2. However, the exact number of beneficiaries who had exited the scheme remained uncertain.
The indefinite suspension of the N-Power Programme raises significant concerns for the over one million Nigerians who have lost their jobs as a result. Many beneficiaries were actively engaged in primary schools across the nation, contributing to the education sector.
Minister Betta Edu’s announcement comes alongside a government commitment to investigate the utilization of funds allocated to the program since its inception. Irregularities in the program include beneficiaries receiving stipends despite not being found in their designated places of assignment, and some individuals remaining on the payroll well beyond their expected exit dates in 2022.
She said,
“We must go back to look into N-Power and understand what the problems are; so we will basically suspend the programme for now until we are done with proper investigation into the utilisation of funds by the N-Power programme.
“We want to know how many people are basically on the programme right now; how many people are owed and the amount they are owed. We are totally restructuring N-Power and expanding it.
“There are lots going on. We met people who were supposed to have exited the programme since last year and they are still claiming that they are teaching.
“Sometimes, we contact the schools or the places where they are working and they are not there. They are not working, yet they keep claiming that they are being owed eight or nine months’ stipends. About 80 per cent of them are not working, yet they are claiming salaries.”
