Ukorebi Esien | 18 August 2020
As beneficiaries of the social investment scheme Npower continue to agitate for the delay in payment of their stipend of two to three months, the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, has finally revealed when Npower beneficiaries will receive their unpaid stipends.
Revealing this in a series of tweets she made Sunday night, Farouq disclosed that the Npower Batch C application portal was closed last Sunday, 9th of August, 2020 with over 5million applications received. She started that efforts are being made to ensure batch A and B are paid their owed stipends before batch C beneficiaries are onboarded.
The tweet reads in parts;
"The N-Power Batch C application portal closed on Sunday, August 9, 2020, after receiving over 5m applications.
"As we embark on the review process, efforts are in high gear to clear the stipends for Batch A and B before onboarding the new set of beneficiaries," the tweet added.
Meanwhile, a rights activists, Aisha Yesufu and cofounder of the Bring Back Our Girls Movement, has called on the disengaged beneficiaries protesting to align with other agitators across the country to embark on the same day
It should be recalled that several beneficiaries of the Federal Government's N-Power programme protested in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, on Thursday 23rd July 2020, over unpaid Stipends and disengagement from the famed programme by Federal Government.
However, after the last protest, reports have emerged suggesting that N-Power beneficiaries that protested their disengagement are rumored to have scheduled another protest, although members of N-Power Representatives Forum from the 36-state and FCT had asked volunteers to disregard the information.
According to the N-Power Representatives Forum, "in order to ensure the safety of volunteers across the states, no volunteer should gather anywhere for protest or rally at the moment."
Reacting to the several protests recorded in the country recently, Mrs. Yesufu, who is a critic of President Buhari's "Next Level government", stressed that agitators can "come together to get result."
"Why can't all the different agitation meet and protest on the same day? Npower wants to protest tomorrow, Arewa lives did a few days ago. You don't have to like each other but you come together to get the result. You think these politicians like each other?" Aisha questioned
0 comments: