Date: 2017-04-24

Following the recent protest by participants of N-Power scheme in Kwara State, government has held meetings with stakeholders to address the issue, National Pilot gathered.

Speaking with this medium on Friday, the Special Adviser on Youth Empowerment to the Governor, Alhaji Saka Babatunde confirmed that his office in conjunction with the Secretary to the State Government, Alhaji Isiaka Gold and the focal person, Elder Ayoola Samuel met on Friday to identify the problems confronting the scheme and to chart the way forward.

He said measures have now been put in place to ensure that those who have genuine registrations processes are paid their stipends.

As part of the outcome of the meeting, he stressed that it was discovered that problems rocking the scheme were caused by beneficiaries who are engaged in one job or the other yet decided to register for the N-Power scheme.

He said there are lot of issues with the way some of the enlistees filled their forms saying some delegated third party who do not have required knowledge of their data.

He said these problems and many more have snowballed into non-payment of some beneficiaries who are now feeling cheated.

Babatunde added that over 25 per cent of the enlistees of the scheme are yet to be captured in the monthly payment with females constituting the larger number. According to him, some of the ladies see no need to change their father's name they used to open accounts before or after getting married to their husband's name.

The Governor's aide said the issue has caused so much confusion and invariably slowed down the payment process.

Babatunde further stressed that some of the participants concocted eleven digit numbers as Bio-metric Verification Number (BVN) saying the banks later discovered that the BVN doesn't matches with name and that it doesn't even exist.

"We realised that majority of the enlistees of the programme had issues ranging from the way some of them completed their forms, some delegated the third party, who doesn't have grounded knowledge of the participants. All these have snowballed into what we have today.

"It is most unfortunate, Federal Government wants to relate directly with the participant without any iota of contribution from the state. "Kwara State had KWABEB scheme and there was no time issues of misplacement of phone number or anything of such happened. The issues started when the programme was suspended.

Babatunde however decried the recent outburst of cult clashes in the state saying it is most unfortunate to still be having such development in the present age when everyone seems to understand better the difference between good and wrong.

He hinted that Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed has swung into action to curb the menace by introducing the youth empowerment programme that will engage many idle minds.