The federal government spends N6bn on beneficiaries
of the N-Power scheme on a monthly basis, a
presidential aide has said.

Afolabi Imoukhuede, the senior special assistant to the
president on job creation, gave the information during
an interactive session with the first batch of the
scheme’s beneficiaries in Edo at the Urhokpota Hall,
Benin City.

“The Federal Government is spending N6billion on
stipends to current beneficiaries every month and the
amount is not a child’s play,” he said.

“Tt is a lifeline to lift you out of unemployment and out
of poverty. This is a serious business to reduce
unemployment and you have to maximize this
chance.”

He said no fewer than 290,000 applications hit the N-
Power job portal on Friday, just three days after it was
opened.

According to him, 200,000 graduates are already
participating in the scheme while the next batch of
300,000 will be engaged from the new applicants.

“The recruitment portal opened on Wednesday and
290,000 applications have entered as at this morning.

The next recruitment will be very competitive,” he said.

“If we do validation of data and any applicant fails at
the point of recruitment he or she has lost the chance.”

He expressed displeasure with the wave of wrong data
fed into the portal by graduate applicants and said
such problems were discouraging.

Imoukhuede told the volunteers that while the scheme
was making efforts to assist them to validate their
entries it would not do same for the next batch of
recruits.

The SSA advised applicants to file their applications by
themselves and ensure that the information asked for
in the application is correct and verifiable.

He acknowledged the challenges encountered by
volunteers in the scheme which were largely caused by
them and called on the new applicants to ensure that
they did not make same mistakes.

Imoukhuede also said that many of the applicants
residing in the rural areas stood better chance of being
recruited as emphasis would be on residence of the
applicants to curb rural-urban migration.

“We do not encourage state re-deployment because
the scheme is unlike the National Youth Service Corps.

Anyone who is not ready to do volunteer job in his
state of domicile should not bother to apply,” he said.

The presidential aide announced that deployment of
the non-graduate applicants successful from the
screening of applications received in 2016 would be
done in batches from July/August 2017.

TheCable