Betta Edu, Nigeria’s Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, has revealed that the Federal Government’s NPower programme payment list contains names of persons that should never have been in the list.
Edu who spoke on Arise TV said a lot of noticeable challenges with the programme had been unraveled, and that the ministry was working to rectify them.
She was specific that “…we found lots of issues with the NPower programme that made us re-engage the entire plan. One of the things was that there were persons registered on the NPower beyond the envelope that was provided for the programme. Secondly, funds were released for payment for people under NPower and they were not paid in a timely manner by the managers of the funds of the NPower beneficiaries.”
She also maintained that, “there were also people who were on the payment list who are not supposed to be there, and there are persons who are there but are not providing any services but have been enrolled to have payment. People whose time with the NPower programme had elapsed, a year ago but they still believe they should continue to get payment, so they called it exit plan, exit payment and so on.”
To remedy this situation(s),“ the first thing we did was to set up a committee to look at these issues which has the secretary of the ministry as the head, and we have received our first report.”
For poverty alleviation, the minister said the federal government was targeting at least 133 million Nigerians between now and 2030 which is in line with the SDGs that Nigeria signed at the United Nations.
The NPower programme was created to reduce the rate of unemployment in the Nigeria. Graduates and non-graduates are given jobs and also trained in relevant skills that will help earn them more money as well as stand them out both locally and globally.
