No ghost beneficiaries in N-power, govt says

The Federal Government says it has no ghost beneficiaries in its social investment programme, N-power.

The government, while reacting to alleged reports of critics of the programme, said it had ensured strict approach in implementing its policies and programmes

In a statement in Abuja on Wednesday, the Communications Manager, National Social Investment Office (NSIO), Justice Bibiye, said there was transparency in running the programme.

“It is either those critics have lost touch with existential realities as it concerns this government’s strict approach in implementing its policies and programmes, or that the resounding successes recorded, as evidenced in the outpouring of sincere and honest testimonies by the beneficiaries, is lost on them.

“We are aware that some persons have assumed the role of perpetual pessimists of the SIPs, following the institution of processes and procedures that frown at selfish tendencies and corrupt practices at the NSIO.

“We, however, owe it a duty to Nigerians to continue to set the records straight whenever naysayers come up with falsehoods to mislead the public.

“We wish to state categorically that there are no N-power ghost beneficiaries neither is the programme embroiled in corruption as alleged by those who have decided to see nothing good in the scheme.

“From application, selection, deployment and payment of volunteers, the process is transparent, being technology driven,’’ he stated.

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He added that the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) had helped to ensure transparency with the use of BVN data, authenticating the identity of each and every name, number and account number submitted by the NSIO.

“For the first set of 200,000 beneficiaries submitted for verification, NIBSS verified 93 per cent of the total number, after which only those verified were submitted to the various States, which entities are saddled with the responsibility of physically verifying the beneficiaries and deploying them to their Primary Places of Assignment (PPA).

“Upon confirmation of the deployments to the PPAs, the NSIO then signs off to the Ministry of Budget and National Planning, which makes payment directly to the accounts of beneficiaries through the NIBBS.

“This process also applies to other components of the social intervention programmes except for the National Conditional Cash Transfer programme, where due to logistics challenges, mobile money agents (MMA) are engaged to reach out to beneficiaries in the rural areas.”

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