By Austin Ogwuda
The popular N-Power programme floated by the Federal meant to give lifeline to the teeming young graduates across the country has been put on hold, temporarily.
In addition, the Federal government which gave directive for the suspension has ordered for an audit exercise for the purpose of unravelling the scam being perpetrated with the scheme.
The news of the suspension was contained in a press statement signed by its National Programme Manager, Dr. Akindele Egbuwalo today, Sunday.
He stated that the suspension has become necessary to give room for a detailed investigation into the operations of the N-Power in the last 12 months.
Dr. Egbuwalo further gave the total number of persons enrolled on N-Power since inception to date as 960,000 people, noting that most of them have exited from N-Power 1.0 and N-Power 2.0
The statement reads: “It is imperative to inform Nigerians, particularly beneficiaries of the N-Power programme across the country, of the temporary suspension of the programme.
“There is a need to audit the number of people in the programme; those who have exited the programme; those who are being owed, whether they reported to work or not and how funds have been utilised over this period of time.
“It was recently discovered instances of programme beneficiaries whose participation had lapsed since 2022 but have remained on and continue to expect payments from the government.
“In addition, some beneficiaries must honour their obligation to the programme: They do not report to their places of primary assignments as required but still receive monthly payments.
“Preliminary findings of our audit”, he went on, “have shown that some consultants are holding on to beneficiaries’ funds disbursed to them long ago even when their contract ended in March 2023 without any renewal.
“We condemn this practice and will not tolerate it going forward. Work is ongoing to identify those involved, understand why the payments didn’t get to the final beneficiaries, and recall the funds to pay those owed”.
He appealed for calm and called on Nigerians to understand the rationale behind the temporary suspension and investigation of the programme geared towards restoring the nation’s confidence in the programme as well as to enable total restructuring of the programme.
According to him, the expected restructuring would accommodate some new programmes, in Education, Health, Works, Agriculture, Technology.
He however assured all beneficiaries with genuine claims that once the audit is completed their claims will be revisited.