Apply for N-SIP – Nigerian government tells youth‎s

The Nigerian government on Thursday advised youths to apply for the Federal Government’s National Social Investment Programme (N-SIP).

N-SIP is a federal government programme aimed at reducing poverty and improving livelihoods of vulnerable groups such as the unemployed youths, women and children.

The Minister of State, Budget and National Planning, Hajiya Zainab Ahmed, ‎disclosed this in Abuja at an event to mark the the second year of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration.

She said N-SIP, which has empowered over 1.6 million Nigerians through its four components – N-Power, National Home Grown School Feeding Programme, Conditional Cash Transfer, and Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme -would be scaled up this year.

“For example, in N-Power Scheme that 200,000 beneficiaries have been employed, we are supposed to increase it to 500,000 beneficiaries in 2017.

“There is opportunity in the N-Power Programme for employment. There is opportunity in the GEEP for you to get finances to be able to start businesses.

“This is real, it is working, join the process and be a beneficiary,” she said.

The minister said that the process was delayed initially because of the effort to eliminate fraudulent applicants and to make the process transparent.

“The deployment, release of funds didn’t start till October 2016 and it is so because we want to make sure that the programme is planned properly.

“We want to make sure that each beneficiary has bank account linked to BVN; we are targeting the right people, not just people nominated by big people.

“That took a lot of time but we thank God that the programme is going on well and it is now easier to upscale it”, Ahmed added.

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