By Adedapo Adesanya
The federal government of Nigeria has revealed that as at July 2019, it has disbursed a total of N275 billion monthly stipend to beneficiaries of the N-Power Graduate Programme.
This is according to the N-Power Impact Report 2019, which indicated that the programme’s objective was to revive the economy by creating 500,000 graduate jobs and deploying them to four key sectors, including education, agriculture, health and finance/tax.
The report explained that the N-Power programme was segmented into four streams, which are N-Power Teach; N-Power Agro, N-Power Tax and N-Power Health.
In the N-Power Teach volunteers under the programme stream help to improve basic education delivery in Nigeria. These volunteers function as support teachers across public primary schools in the country. In the last 24 months, 319,827 graduates are currently enrolled in the scheme.
The N-Power Agro, which currently enrols 121,841 graduates, ensures that volunteers function as intermediaries to help stimulate the agriculture value-chain.
The report stated that the N-Power Health graduates, who are about 47,975, sensitised and provided advocacy services to members of their respective communities, including pregnant women, children, families and individuals at the health centres.
About 5,228 graduates were enrolled in the N-Power Tax. They were trained on financial and tax matters, working to improve the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of the government through the Voluntary Asset and Income Declaration (VAIDS).
According to the report, upon final recruitment and selection, 64.23 percent of the total selected volunteers were enrolled in the N-Teach programme, N-Agro Volunteers represent the second-highest enrolled programme with 24.47 percent of the volunteers employed into the programme, while N-Health and N-Tax have 9.63 per cent and 1.05 percent of beneficiaries respectively.
Accordingly, all volunteers have all been fully on-boarded on the N-Power Volunteers Network (NPVN) platform and are currently deployed to various places of assignment within their states of residence.
“All beneficiaries in the programme have been consistently paid monthly stipends culminating in about N275 billion as at July 31, 2019,” the report stressed.
The report disclosed that 23.7 million Nigerians were being served by beneficiaries of N-Power, with 3.5 million individuals impacted with every volunteer having an average of seven dependents.
It then revealed that while over 25,000 indirect additional jobs were created to support the programme, there were, however, over 10,000 physically-challenged volunteers in the N-Power initiative.
Modupe Gbadeyanka