14,020 N-Power beneficiaries on payroll of other govt agencies -FG

The ministry of humanitarian affairs, disaster management and social development says 14,020 beneficiaries of N-Power have existing accounts on the payroll of other agencies.

Established in 2016, the N-Power scheme is one of the national social investment programmes of the federal government targeted at unemployed graduates who are engaged by the government and paid N30,000 monthly stipend.

In a statement on Thursday, Rhoda Iliya, deputy director of information at the ministry, said some beneficiaries were not paid their stipends because the payment platform already recognised their accounts.

She said the office of the accountant-general of the federation is working to resolve the outstanding payment of genuine and eligible beneficiaries.

“The attention of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development has been drawn to the complaint of non-payment of some N-Power beneficiaries during the last exercise, with some, alleging non-payment for upward of four months,” she said.

“For the records, the Ministry wishes to state that it had always processed, approved and remitted necessary information for payments to the Office of the Accountant–General of the Federation (OAGF) whose responsibility it is to credit the various accounts of the beneficiaries, using the GIFMIS platform as directed by FGN.

“However, after receiving complaint of non-payment by some beneficiaries who did same through the ministry, the OAGF (GIFMIS) officially wrote informing the ministry that out of a total of Five Hundred and Sixteen Thousand, Six Hundred (516,600) N-Power beneficiaries data sent to OAGF for migration in April, 2020, only a total of Five Hundred and Two Thousand, Five Hundred and Eighty (502,580) data have successfully migrated to the GIFMIS platform, while a total of Fourteen Thousand and Twenty (14,020) beneficiaries were returned because the beneficiaries’ account details already exist in other MDAs, which is against the established rule of the N-Power programme. This is verifiable.

“The Honourable Minister, Sadiya Umar Farouq, regrets any inconvenience this might have caused genuine and eligible beneficiaries just as the OAGF saddled with the responsibility of filtering out those denied is working assiduously to remedy the situation.”

In July, the federal government disengaged beneficiaries in the first two batches of the programme, while there is an ongoing exercise to recruit new sets of beneficiaries.

In 2019, TheCable exposed the bribery and massive fraud in the scheme, detailing how beneficiaries connive with officials to abscond from duty, thereby milking the government of billions of naira monthly.