Federal government has said it spends N30 billion monthly on N-Power beneficiaries’ stipends.
This was disclosed by the minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, during the closing ceremony of the 3,000 N-Power beneficiaries trained on hardware, software engineering under N-Tech in Abuja, yesterday.
The minister who was represented by the national coordinator, National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), Dr. Umar Bindr, said about 1million Nigerians are beneficiaries of the N-Power yearly which has contributed greatly towards lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty a program initiated by President Muhammadu Buhari led administration.
“If you have 1million graduates attached to NSIP every month for the one year, they are paid a stipend of N30,000, so every month there is a bill of 30bn just to pay the stipend, then you can do the calculation in one year, we can talk about N360bn for every year only paying for stipends.
The non-graduates have packages, computers, and other facilities, they have been trained and after this, they can start their own business.
“The government is investing about 300 to 400bn every year for the program. The NSIP has been adjourned as one of the best poverty alleviation programmes in Africa” he said.
Farouq tasked the beneficiaries to make good use of the knowledge obtained from the training to impact others for the betterment of society.
The beneficiaries which were selected from states within the North Central geopolitical zone,(Plateau, Nasarawa, Niger, Kogi, and the Federal Capital Territory are currently undergoing training at the Public Service Institute of Nigeria (PSIN), Kubwa, Abuja.
N-Power Knowledge – which is a non-graduate program and embodies the N-Tech Hardware, N-Tech Software and the N-Creative training programmes (animation and scriptwriting).