Presidency: N-power, others gulped N109bn in one year

The Presidency said yesterday that it spent a total of N109 billion on its social investment programmes between October 2016 and and November 2017.

The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, in a statement said this was from the N110 billion released.

According to the vice president’s spokesman, N500 billion was appropriated for the programme in 2016; and N400 billion in 2017.

He said within the period under review, the N-power job scheme alone gulped N69,731,256,122; the Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme, N11,700,200,466; the Conditional Cash Transfer, N5,235,401,087 and the Home-grown School Feeding Programme, N22,370,719,017.

Akande stated: “Over 246 million (246,355,190) meals has been served to date to primary pupils across 20 states in the country, since the first meal served in December 2016, under the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP). The total figure is expected to reach 313,928,420 meals by the last week of February 2018.

“Also, the School Feeding Programme now feeds 6,044,625 pupils in 33,981 public primary schools across 20 states. More states are expected to be added to the programme this year. The NHGSFP plans to implement feeding in a total of 28 states, while it aims to link farmers to school feeding markets.

“In the same vein, several milestones were recorded by the Buhari administration’s National Social Investment Programmes (NSIP) in 2017, in line with its inclusive growth plan, which includes tackling poverty and hunger, and creating jobs for Nigerians. About 40,000 direct jobs have since been created from the School Feeding Programme across the participating states. The 20 states that have so far been covered by the NHGSFP include Anambra, Enugu, Oyo, Osun, Ogun, Ebonyi, Zamfara, Delta, Abia, Benue, Plateau, Bauchi, Taraba, Kaduna, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River, Imo, Jigawa, Niger, and Kano.

“Also, in 2017, the school feeding programme collaborated with the Federal Ministry of Health to deliver an integrated deworming programme for pupils in all public primary schools classes 1 to 6 across 17 states nationwide.

“Meanwhile, the school feeding programme now has a social media-based quality assurance tracking system, #TrackWithUs, ensuring that required standards for menu for pupils and meal distribution are adhered to across the states in a transparent manner.

“Similarly, the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) has so far recorded over 280,000 beneficiaries in 21 states, while about 300,000 Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme (GEEP) micro-credit, interest-free loans have been disbursed nationwide.

“In the same vein, in 2017, the N-power scheme, which is targeted at providing jobs for unemployed young graduates, started its physical verification process for the 2017 applicants. In 2018, more beneficiaries are expected to be added to about 200,000 young graduates currently employed under the scheme.”