President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development to increase beneficiaries of the N-Power programme by five million.
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Sadiya Umar Farouq, who disclosed this at the handing over of feeding utensils by the humanitarian ministry to beneficiaries of the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme in Nasarawa State, said Buhari directed her ministry to accommodate more N-Power beneficiaries, adding that Batch-C of the scheme, which admitted over one million persons, had been inaugurated.
Farouq said, “We have recently inaugurated the Batch C N-Power scheme, which is aimed at helping over one million unemployed Nigerian youths to gain useful experience and technical skills that they can convert into small businesses to further support themselves.
“This is in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s directives for the expansion of the programme to accommodate an additional five million beneficiaries.
“The school feeding programme for which we have gathered today provides one free meal to over nine million pupils in primary schools across the country.
“In Nasarawa State we are providing funds to the state selected aggregators and 2,768 vendors and to feed 194,649 pupils, in 745 schools across the 13 Local Government Areas. In that value chain alone hundreds of jobs are created every day and people are earning.”
The Focal Person, NSIP, Nasarawa State, Usman Jibrin, explained that the programme started in Nasarawa in 2019 with a total number of 1,200 cooks and 86,329 pupils.
“At present, we have a total number of 2,768 cooks and 194,649 pupils benefitting from the programme. A total amount N1.498bn was expended in Nasarawa under the programme from January 2019 to October 2021,” he said.
