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Exited Npower beneficiaries lament, say Nigerian govt making money off them

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ADAMAWA: Nigerian govt sacks 30 N-Power beneficiaries

Exited Npower beneficiaries are unhappy with the method with which the Federal Government is handling the selection, confirmation and commencement of the NEXIT training.

With two days to go before the February 4, 2022 deadline issued to exited Npower beneficiaries to confirm their selection and availability for the training, many have trooped to various Npower pages to lay complaints.

Ripples Nigeria had previously reported that the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Nneka Anibeze, disclosed beneficiaries should dial *45665# on or before Friday 4th February.

However, many beneficiaries said they’ve been receiving error messages or unable to access the need information after dialling the USSD code which is meant to be done in two steps.

This has raised speculations about the purpose of the USSD code, as regardless of the message received, the exited Npower beneficiaries were charged N30 for usage.

There are about 500,000 previous Npower beneficiaries from batch A and B who were selected in 2016 and 2017 respectively, and exited simultaneously in 2020.

Read also: Exited NPower participants get deadline to confirm participation

Ripples Nigeria findings showed that if all the NEXIT training hopefuls dialled the code, it means about N15 million was made from the exited Npower beneficiaries who dialled the USSD code one-time.

This prompted Npower beneficiaries to question if the government is using them to make money ahead of the NEXIT training.

According to one of the commenters, Abdullahi Abdulsalam, who posted on NEXIT Discussion Forum, on Wednesday, he said, “NPOWER management will send emails and SMS to all successful shortlisted NEXIT applicants as at when it’s appropriate to do so.

“They only introduce the USSD CODE to make as much money as they could, so irrespective of whether you dial the code or not you will be notified via email or sms if you have been shortlisted for NEXIT batch 1 training program.

“You could recalled that the ussd code *45665# was first introduced prior to the commencement of the Npower batch C stream 1 program where batch C beneficiaries were asked to dial the same code to check their status and that did not stop Npower from contacting them through emails and sms.” Abdulsalam wrote.

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