N-Power to accommodate 1 million beneficiaries, says Osinbajo

Nigeria’s vice president Yemi Osinbajo on Tuesday said government’s N-Power programme will be expanded to accommodate 1 million beneficiaries in the next phase in 2019.

Osinbajo said it was important for more citizens to benefit from the social intervention programme to curb the growing rate of unemployment in the country.

“The idea of N-Power is supposed to be government’s own programme of direct employment and training. At the moment, we have taken up to 500,000 and in the next phase, we are looking at another 200,000 and closely followed by another 300,000,” Osinbajo’s media aide Laolu Akande said in a statement.

“In all, we will be employing up to a million; and that will be the largest post-tertiary job programme in entire Africa.”

The vice-president said that N-Power was borne out of the growing need for government’s direct intervention in job creation.

“The reason why we have done this is because of the employment problems that we have, we may not be able to engage everybody but at least, the government must give some direct provision of jobs,“ Osinbajo said.

He explained that it would be impossible for a government to fix all the unemployment issues and pay more than the N30, 000 stipend given to beneficiaries on a monthly basis.

Osinbajo assured beneficiaries that the Nigerian Government would create an enabling environment to ensure that employed and unemployed Nigerians can add value to the society.

He added that ongoing infrastructural projects were one of many structures the Buhari-led administration was using to create the opportunities to provide more jobs, especially through manufacturing and construction.

“So, we are doing roads and rail, providing power; that is the way we can develop industry. We are energising our markets at the moment, putting solar power in the markets.”