The Presidency said last night that 13 states have submitted the verified list of graduates who applied for the Federal Government jobs, otherwise called N-Power jobs.
Disclosing this while giving an update on the programme yesterday, Mr. Laolu Akande, Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity in the Office of the Vice President, stated that in some states, the graduates had been deployed to their primary places of assignment, noting that payment of the N30,000 stipends for the graduates would commence this month once verification and deployment were done.
According to him, the states include Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Cross River, Gombe, Jigawa, Katsina and Kogi states. Others are Niger, Plateau, Sokoto, Taraba and Zamfara States, while verification and deployment have already been completed in Benue, Cross River and Kogi.
Akande added: “Under the N-Power Volunteer Scheme, the Federal Government announced the selection and engagement of 200,000 unemployed graduates as the first batch of the half a million the Buhari administration plans to hire for the 2-year paid volunteer job programme.”
He also stated that the present government was determined to create jobs for the youths.
He said: “While the Federal Government is responsible for their monthly stipends, it is in partnership with state governments to verify the selected unemployed graduates and deploy them to their primary places of assignment since each of the volunteer graduates would be serving in their communities where they are resident.
“In virtually all the states of the federation, the verification has commenced and there are indications that much progress would be made this week in order to enable the Federal Government process the monthly payments of the already verified graduates before Christmas.
“The Buhari administration is keen on ensuring that the selected 200,000 graduates are able to draw their stipends starting this month, as plans have been concluded to release the funds once verification is completed. States have been very cooperative in working with the Federal Government so much that even in states that have not completed verification by weekend, much activities are going on towards attaining that goal.”
