NPower Latest News Today: Batch C Stream 1 Due For Exit

Npower Latest News: The current minister of humanitarian affairs, disaster management and social development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, made this disclosure in a recent post on Facebook through the SA on media & publicity to the Honourable Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management And Social Development (Nneka Ikem Anibeze).

The minister also added that the batch C2 pre-selected applicants have concluded their physical verification exercise using one of their strategic partners (NYSC), while maintaining that the deployment process commenced on the 1st of August for 490,000 beneficiaries to fill the space of one million N-POWER beneficiaries as approved by Mr President.  She equally emphasized that “Deployment is handled by the State Focal Persons to ensure that beneficiaries are deployed to PPAs closer to them”.

“ All the 36 States and FCT have all received the batch deployment schedule that commenced on 1st August, 2022”, she reiterated.

The Minister was responding to a publication in the Daily Trust titled “OPEN LETTER TO MUHAMMADU BUHARI – WHY SADIYA UMAR FAROUQ SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE”.

The minister to took time “to set the records straight for the sake of our partners and stakeholders”, and especially millions of vulnerable people across the country as follows:

“a) The North East has a total number of 167,412 Npower Beneficiaries with only 31,942  from Bauchi while a total number of 1,603,617  pupils are currently being fed under the Home Grown School Feeding Programme with 444,099  from Bauchi.

“b) Whereas self-acclaimed party elder lied that South Easterners have  accused the Minister of nepotism, our interventions are distributed across border,  based on the Multidimensional Poverty Index MPI.

“The total number of pupils feeding in the South East are 778,450 while the N-Power beneficiaries are 136,629.

“c) The author’s allegation that over 80,000 N-Power beneficiaries were yet to receive their stipends for five months is false.

“The five months allowance owed 14,021 was ‘flagged’ in March 2020 by the Federal Government Payment system Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS ) for various reasons including:

beneficiaries having multiple accounts, and beneficiaries’ accounts receiving payments (salaries and allowances) from Federal Government’s Ministries, Departments and Agencies  (MDAs) or as permanent employees or for participating in other schemes. In Bauchi State, for example, 191 Beneficiaries of such, flagged by GIFMIS have been cleared, paid and exited from the programme.

“d) Batch C Npower  beneficiaries were divided into two streams, C1 and C2. Batch C1 was deployed in September 2021 and are due to exit the programme this August 2022 after spending 12 months in the programme.  The payment system is transparent and verifiable using the FECs approved NASIMS platform where each beneficiary sees on the platform,  reasons for payment and  for non-payment  owing to truancy or transaction failure.

“The batch C2  pre-selected applicants have concluded their physical verification exercise using one of our strategic partners (NYSC). The deployment process commenced on the 1st of August for 490,000 beneficiaries to fill the space of one million N-POWER beneficiaries as approved by Mr President. Deployment is handled by the State Focal Persons to ensure that beneficiaries are deployed to PPAs closer to them.

“ All the 36 States and FCT have all received the batch deployment schedule that commenced on 1st August, 2022. This can be verified independently.

“On a final note, we wish to assure the public and all stakeholders that the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development remains committed to actualising the objectives for which it was set up.

“The Ministry recognises the sponsored attacks on the Minister as cheap political blackmail. It would, therefore, neither be distracted nor fazed in its desire to bring succour and relief to those who need them.