Percy Onyeka
The Federal Government has commenced payment of arrears to the beneficiaries of the N-Power programme.
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Betta Edu disclosed this in an interview on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Thursday.
Edu said, “Presently, a payment for N-Power is ongoing; we were in the office yesterday up until the early hours of this morning, just to ensure that young people get monies which they have been owed from the last government.
“So, N-Power beneficiaries across the nation, I am sure you can attest to the fact that you are seeing your money in your accounts and this process will continue until the last person who indeed has served is being paid.
“And of course, all of this is being restructured to ensure that we reduce unemployment and create jobs for Nigerians,” Edu said.
Recall that the beneficiaries of the scheme were being owed some months’ salaries by the former President Muhammadu Buhari administration.
N-Power is a scheme set up by then President Muhammadu Buhari on June 8, 2016, to address the issues of youth unemployment and help increase social development.
The programme was temporarily suspended after President Bola Tinubu took over from Buhari.
But Edu explained that the present government wants to settle the baggage from the previous years before resuming the programme again.
She said, “The Renewed Hope N-Power has not been relaunched yet. We are still trying to deal with the baggage from the previous years. So, these are persons who were owed monies for a few months.
“We used to have a consultant who used to manage the payments of these monies to the N-Power beneficiaries. However, the monies were being held up with the consultants for months without paying the beneficiaries.
“So, what government did was to recover the money back into the governments TSA CBN account and now started scrutiny of the beneficiaries which took us this while to do and that is why we appeal to the young people to be patient,” the minister said.
