The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development has allegedly allocated slots to Nigerian lawmakers in the ongoing 2020 recruitment for N-Power.
Sadiya Umar Farouq, the minister of humanitarian affairs, disaster management and social development has been under immense pressure since she took over reigns in October 2019 to do the will of the Federal lawmakers, who had tried severally to hijack the Social Investments Programmes (SIPs). The N-Power programme is one of the SIPS.
The lawmakers seem to have finally had their way after meetings with Hajia Farouq.
Although, most meetings were centred on ‘unfair disengagements’ and complaints of non-payment of stipends by the current N-Power beneficiaries, the Nigerian lawmakers had severally and publicly claimed many of their constituents are not benefitting from the programme. Chief among them was Senator Dino Melaye when he was in the Red Chamber.
However, Afriupdate can confirm that the lawmakers’ claims are unfounded as the N-Power recruitments done in 2016 and 2018 under the Office of the Vice-President Prof. Yemi Osinbajo were arguably the most open government hiring since Nigeria returned to Democracy in 1999.
When N-Power recruitment was done pre-Sadiya Farouq era, beneficiaries do not need high-wire connections as the screening process was largely transparent and efficient.
Farouq’s ministry had announced that its registration portal will reopen for registration out of which 400,000 beneficiaries will be taken from the application pool. N-Power 2020 application is currently ongoing.
At this moment in time, according to SaharaReporters, Farouq’s ministry has allocated about 50,000 slots to federal lawmakers and other politicians across the country.
As the portal for the registration opened late yesterday night, it was gathered that the lawmakers printed registration forms of N-Power, which they shared among their cronies.
Some of the lawmakers, who received slots under the scheme include President of the National Assembly, Ahmad Lawan; Senator Abdul Ningi; and Speaker of Bauchi State House of Assembly, Abubakar Y Suleiman.
See the N-Power forms below:
The N-Power was introduced in 2016 as part of President Muhammadu Buhari’s National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), aimed at curbing the incessant increase of unemployment and poverty in the country.
The programme volunteers are paid N30,000 monthly as stipends and some are given tablet computers to aid further learning. Some of its component are N-Teach, N-Tax, N-Health, N-Agro, and N-Build.
According to the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs earlier this year, 473, 137 Nigerian youths (Batch A and B) – paid a stipend of N30, 000 monthly – are currently enrolled in the N-Power graduate programme.
Every month, the Federal Government spends about N15 billion as stipends on nearly 500,000 volunteers of the N-Power scheme, a component of the National Social Investment Programmes (N-SIP).
Recognised as one of the largest post-tertiary employment programmes in Africa, the Muhammadu Buhari government sees the scheme as one of its major achievements.
N-Teach is the most popular of the N-SIP, which also focuses on health, agriculture,and public finance.
Due to the deficiency in the number of teaching staff in public schools, many “unemployed graduates” were deployed to schools in order to complement the efforts of the staff on ground.
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