The Federal Government has stated that the redesigned N-Power scheme would create jobs for at least five million youths in the country.
According to Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Betta Edu, who was speaking on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, said the N-Power scheme is a component of the safety net program designed to prevent people from falling into poverty.
“We are working on five million Nigerian youth between the ages of 18 and 40 and this will be taken one million per year. On the GEEP program, we’re working on 1.5 million Nigerians,” she said.
Her comment came days after the Federal Government suspended the scheme, a component of the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), launched by former President Muhammadu Buhari on June 26, 2016, to combat youth unemployment and promote social development.
But in the redesigned programme, the Minister stressed that the N-Power scheme would be on a first-come-first-serve basis.
“N-Power everyone who applies would be based on first-come-first-serve. As far as you meet the criteria for each category, you would be given a chance on first-come-first-serve and the servers can confirm what is a quota for each state. So, we are not necessarily going to allocate quotas to states,” the minister maintained.
She said the scheme and other social intervention programmes of the government are geared toward fighting poverty in the country.
“What our ministry is doing is to provide a social safety net that prevents these people from falling into poverty and trying to pull as many as possible that into poverty out of poverty.
“We have mapped out different programs, national programs, that are expected to address the issue of multi-dimensional poverty. Of course, we have the N-Power which is supposed to create five million jobs in five years.
“We have several other projects that are lined up, all of them are targeted at the different dimensions of poverty,” the minister added.
Credit: channelstv.com
