After three years of their recruitment into the N-Power Scheme, the
federal government is set to exit 200,000 of the beneficiaries from the
programme. Their disengagement will take place between January and
February this year, LEADERSHIP has learnt.
Some officials of the
National Social Investment Office (NSIO) and the Federal Ministry of
Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development,
operators of the scheme confirmed the development in Abuja, yesterday.
They
said that the 200,000 persons to go were among 500,000 young Nigerians
recruited by the federal government for the N-Power programme in 2016.
It
was gathered that they were being dropped from the scheme because there
was no budgetary provision for them in the 2020 national budget.
The
youth empowerment programme was created by the federal government with a
focus on large-scale skill development for employment and social
development. The beneficiaries were recruited in two batches: Batch A:
200,000 and Batch B: 300,000 in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
A top
official of NSIO told LEADERSHIP that the time had come for the
affected 200,000 beneficiaries to go, as he repeatedly said: “But they
must go. They have to go. Government cannot sustain it. Government has
to graduate some so that they can enroll other people too.”
The
source said that the management of NSIO had already prepared an exit
plan for the exiting beneficiaries after spending 16 extra months for
the two-year programme. They were reportedly paid nine months of the
extra time.
It was further gathered that the exit plan is
currently waiting the approval of the minister of Finance, Budget and
National Planning, Zainab Ahmed.
Also a source in the presidency
explained that the first batch of 200,000 were supposed to leave the
internship scheme before now, adding that they were left on the payroll
because of the 2019 general elections because that was not the right
time to disengage the.
“Their exit time fell on 2018 which was
election period. So, it will not be wise for the government to be
sacking 200,000 people on the eve of the general elections. Politically,
it’s not wise. That’s why the programme stretched till this time. They
have even stayed nine months extra on the payroll.
“The truth is
that they don’t even have allocation for them in the 2020 budget and
because of that, they will not be paid. They will exit them this January
or so,” the source said.
The beneficiaries were to have
graduated from the N-Power after two years of internship but they stayed
longer for another 16 months on the government’s payroll, he said.
Disengagement PlansCommenting
on the disengagement plan for the Batch A members, the source explained
that the federal government is looking for a soft-landing for them,
adding that the aim was to ensure that they were not pushed into the
labour market without any empowerment.
Part of the plan,
according to him, is to allow the participants access to loans of
between N30,000 and N100,000 to start up small and medium scale
businesses.
The source added that federal government officials
were already meeting with the state governments that benefited from the
N-Power Agro, N-Power Health, N-Power Teach, N-Power Community
Education, and N-Power Health workers to absorb or engage those that had
been productive.
It was also learnt that the government plans to
liaise with private sector employers and other public institutions such
as the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence corps (NSCDC), Nigeria
Immigration Service (NIS) and the police to absorb some of them since
they had acquired about three years’ experience in various areas.
Another
source disclosed that the government plans to enlist some of them into
the Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme (GEEP) being run by the
Bank of Industry (BoI) to give them loan facilities.
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