Following allegations of corruption and massive irregularities in the YOUWIN programme, Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has announced that the Federal Government has stopped further disbursement of cash to beneficiaries.

Adeosun made this known on Friday explaining that the decision was to enable detailed investigations into the allegations.

The minister noted that several petitions have been received from whistle-blowers, including one which provided documentary evidence of irregularities in 10 cases out of the YouWin3 batch of beneficiaries to which about N611.8 million was disbursed.

She explained that the Muhammadu Buhari-led administration continued with the YOUWIN programme, which was initiated by the Goodluck Jonathan administration, because of some legally binding commitments of grants to 1,500 entrepreneurs selected in the first two batches of the programme designed to help young graduates gain employment.

Adeosun noted that in order to honour the subsisting commitments with the beneficiaries that the present administration decided to organise the YouWin 3 batch of awardees.

She, however, acknowledged that an internal investigation had led to some startling discoveries, including that one of the awardees was the child of a former director in the finance ministry.

The Minister said the investigation also threw up a number of cases where married couples each benefitted separately from the cash disbursements, raising concerns about the integrity of the original selection process since 2014 when it began.

“The position of the Ministry is that investigations are ongoing under the Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA) that will review each suspected case to determine whether any irregularity occurred.  In the interim, disbursements of this batch have been suspended,” Adeosun said.

It is estimated that the YOUWIN programme has led to the creation of about 3,900 enterprises since its inception four years ago.

The present administration under President Buhari acknowledged the success of the original programme and decided to sustain it after a review.

Consequently, the finance ministry redesigned the programme and relaunched it as YOUWINConnect to focus more on continuous enterprise education, to help build the capacity of young entrepreneurs across a range of disciplines.