ASO ROCK WATCH: When 5781 corrupt youths taste Buhari’s ruthlessness. 2 other stories

The sack of 5, 781 N-Power beneficiaries was one dominant issue around the Presidency last week. The dismissal of the beneficiaries of the N-Power programme was made public, on March 7, 2020, by the Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Job Creation and Youth Employment, Afolabi Imoukheude, while he was addressing some beneficiaries in Abuja. The sacked youths were allegedly found to be regularly absent from their Places of Primary Assignment (PPAs).

Imoukheude did not mince words in asserting that the beneficiaries were sacked due to their overwhelming truancy and nonchalant behaviour in the discharge of their duties. “We have been receiving enormous complaints that a lot of you no longer go to work. The head teacher in your Primary Place of Assignment (PPA) is your Buhari and has the responsibility to teach, monitor and educate you. I have some good news for most of you, 5,781 of you have been forcefully exited out of the programme because of disciplinary issues.”

In fulfillment of his promise to create three million jobs within three years of being in office, President Buhari had established the National Social Investment Programmes, (NSIP), which the N-Power programme is part of, in 2016, to tackle youth unemployment. Part of the strategy was to deploy graduates and non-graduates between the ages of 18-35 to help resuscitate public service in the agricultural, tax, health and educational sectors.

Available records indicate that through the N-Power programme, which is run under the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, headed by Hajiya Sadiya Umar Farouq, 500, 000 graduates have been paid and employed in the last two years. The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Social Investment Programmes, Ismaeel Ahmed, on November 17, 2019, disclosed that the payments started in 2016.

“Through the N-Power programme, 500, 000 graduates have been employed and are paid N30, 000 every month. If you calculate that for the two years that they have been there, you will understand how much we’ve invested,” Ahmed stated. By paying 500, 000 graduates N30, 000 monthly for two years, the Federal Government had spent a total of N360bn.

The graduates are deployed to teach in public schools, act as health workers in primary health centres, agricultural extension advisors to smallholder farmers in the communities, coupled with the duty of acting as community tax liaison officers.

Read also: ASO ROCK WATCH: When 295 ‘tankers’ pass through the eye of a needle. 2 other stories we tracked

This is not the first time the beneficiaries of the programme would be sacked. In July 2019, President Buhari sacked 2, 525 beneficiaries of the programme for absconding from their PPAs. So, the question to ask is what lessons were learnt from the previous experience? In a country where transparency and accountability remain a cog in the wheel of governance, it won’t be out of place to insinuate that acts of sabotage could only have been made possible through active connivance of top corrupt government officials.

We dare to ask the number of public servants who have been found corrupting the scheme and what may have become of them. Until then, the sack of 5781 youths can only be seen as part of deeper rot that requires a thorough cleansing.

2 other stories

Who wants borders perpetually closed?

President Muhammadu Buhari, last week, while having an audience with the outgoing President of the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID), Mr Bashir Mamman Ifo, and his successor, Dr. George Nana Donkor, at the Presidential villa, Abuja, confidently stated that the country had benefitted immensely from the partial border closure of its land borders.

“We have saved millions of dollars. We have realized that we don’t have to import rice. We have achieved food security. We have curtailed the importation of drugs and proliferation of small arms which threaten our country,” the President averred.

This is not the first time that Nigerians would be notified that the partial shutdown of land borders, across the country, had accrued monumental pecuniary gains to the country. The Comptroller General, Nigeria Customs Service, (NCS), Retired Col. Hameed Ali, on October 2, 2019, told National Assembly members that they make billions on a daily basis since the Federal Government closed the borders.

“When we closed the border, my fear was that our revenue was going to drop. To be honest, our revenue kept increasing. There was a day in September (2019) that we collected N9.2 billion in one day. It has never happened before. This is after the closure of the border and since then, we have maintained an average of about N4.7 billion to N5.8 billion on a daily basis which is far more than we used to collect.”

Perhaps, the President’s reiteration of the benefits the country has got through the border closure was to silence Nigerians and neighbouring countries who have been crying for him to reopen the borders. The borders have been closed for over six months and it may be safe to assume that Nigerians are already adjusting to the closure policy. That said, are we also to assume that since Nigeria appears to have made some gains out of the exercise, then a more sustainable approach to managing our borders and relationship with neighbouring countries should not be strategically pursued? Nigerians do deserve an answer.

Will Ndigbo keep shut? 

The Presidency last week promised that the ongoing Federal Government legacy projects in the South-east would be completed before the expiration of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration in 2023.

The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, gave the assurances.on March 5, 2020, noting that the ongoing federal projects in the five South-eastern States of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo were at different stages of completion.

Adesina also mentioned that in 2018 the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, had listed 69 ongoing projects in the region, mainly roads and bridges, funded from budgetary allocations, the Sukuk Bond and the Presidential Infrastructure Development Fund.

There are strong perceptions that the people of the South-east are not favoured in the Buhari administration. Many continue to regard the ‘legacy projects’ as mere tokenism and this has been further heightened by recent reservations expressed by top Igbo politicians who have collectively condemned the non-inclusion of the Southeast in the list of states to benefit from a fresh $22.7bn loan being sought by the Nigerian government.

It would be interesting to see how Buhari succeeds in keeping the mouth of Ndigbo shut  with projects allocated to the zone.

By John Chukwu…

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