The administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has started
plans to pay the N5000 monthly allowance to the about N25 million
unemployed youths in the country by 2016.
The All Progressives Congress had promised before the election that
it would address the issue of unemployment by paying unemployed youths
N5000 and also introduce a feeding programme to schools.
The Peoples Democratic Party had in a motion called on the president
to immediately fulfil his campaign promise by implementing the N5000
payment to unemployed youths but the move was rejected by APC senators.
READ ALSO: Citizens Have A Part To Play In Tackling Unemployment
The Punch however reports that the federal government had started
plan on Monday, November 16 to pay the unemployed youths and also
implement the school feeding programme and this will be covered in the
2016 budget.
Some officials have also been saddled with the responsibility of
finding out the accurate number of youths that will benefit from the
scheme.
A top government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity
said the scheme had to be done well so that it would not be mismanaged
and hijacked by politicians.
“You know that if the scheme is left open-ended, even Nigerians,
who are employed and are by no means vulnerable, will still struggle to
benefit from it.
“You also know that if not properly handled, politicians will
hijack the scheme and it will become a means of settling their
constituents, whether they qualify to benefit from it or not.
This is why the government will come up with data on the beneficiaries very soon.”
The official said the scheme might not take off in January or
February of next year as it was important to ascertain the number of
youths that deserve the payment and how much it would cost.
Mr. Laolu Akande who is the senior special adviser to the vice
president on media and publicity confirmed that work was already on to
identify the beneficiaries.
He said: “Work is ongoing on various aspects of the
implementation of that social investment plan, including the
identification of those that will benefit from it. Very soon, we shall
be concluding work on that; that is a very important aspect of the
programme.
“The plan of the government is to start as much as possible in
the area of social investment, and conditional cash transfer is part of
it.
“It is the plan of the government to explore how to start this with the 2016 budget.”
According to the Ministry of Finance and that of Budget and National
Planning, the full implementation of the scheme would cost the federal
government N125bn monthly and a total sum of N1.5tr annually
Another anonymous source said that apart from the N5000 unemployment
payment and the school feeding programme, the government also planned to
take care of Internally Displaced Persons.
He said: “We have started working on the budget since September this year at the Ministry of Budget and Planning.
“Since the ministry is the one coordinating the plans of
government, what we did was to identify six priority programmes by
pillars which have already been communicated to all the Ministries,
Departments and Agencies of government.
READ ALSO: N5000 Stipend: Why Buhari Can’t Fulfil Promise
“So while preparing the medium term plan, what we did was to look
at the manifesto of the APC and prepare our plan based on what its
campaign promises were to Nigerians before the elections.
“And since social development is a key aspect of its campaign, we
identified social protection schemes such as the conditional cash
transfer and the school feeding programme as key to the programmes for
2016.”
President Buhari canceled the SURE P Programme which was also aimed at helping Nigerian youths.Christopher Kolade
who headed the programme before he risigned said it had been hijacked
by politicians and the true beneficiaries did not benefit from it.
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