ABOUT 48 hours after the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development opened the portal for N-Power Batch C registration, over 1 million unemployed Nigerians have applied for the empowerment scheme, the Ministry said in a post.

There are only 400,000 positions to be filled in the Federal Government’s social empowerment scheme known as N-Power. The portal for registration was opened on Friday June 26 and as of Sunday, June 28, over 1 million applications have been received according to the Ministry.

“Inline with the ongoing N-POWER Batch C online application which commenced Friday June 26, 2020, the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs Disaster Management and Social Development, hereby announces that over 1,000,000 applications have been received from across the Federation in less than 48 hours after the Honourable Minister, Sadiya Umar Farouq, declared open the new N-Power Portal on the Ministry’s website,” the Ministry said.

The N-Power Programme was inaugurated by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2016 under the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) with the mandate of lifting citizens out of poverty through capacity building, investment, and direct support.

According to an available fact sheet from the National Bureau of Statics (NBS), there are 20.9 million unemployed Nigerians as at third quarter of 2018.

Since its commencement in 2016, the N-Power scheme has enrolled a total of 500,000 Nigerians- 200, 000 in September as Batch A and 300, 000 in August 2018 as Batch B.

However, prior to the news of the disengagement of  500,000 Batch A and B beneficiaries on June 30 and July 31, respectively, The ICIR had reported how some beneficiaries of the batches cried out to the government over non-payment of their three-month stipends since March till June, 2020.

The beneficiaries had also written to Ahmed Lawan, the Senate President over the failure of the Minister in charge of the scheme to pay their monthly stipends in the last three months.

The commencement of the Batch C enrollment, according to a statement from the ministry through Rhoda Iliya, its Deputy Director of Press,  “is sequel to far-reaching consultations and a review of the submissions on the reform and realignment of the programme for greater efficiency.”

According to Rhoda, Batch C is also being enrolled to provide opportunities for more Nigerian youths to access the programme, in furtherance of the president’s vision of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by creating opportunities that will enhance the productivity of the Nigerian youths for entrepreneurship.