Cabal Hijacks N-Power Scheme in Niger

From Saka Bolaji, Minna

The good intention of the AP- led Federal government to introduce the N-Power programme with the aim of reducing the number of unemployed youths across the country has been hijacked by a cabal in Niger state focal point of the program.
N-Power initiative under the office of the Vice President Prof Yemi Osinbajo was without any prejudice, nepotism but transparent because the whole registration was done by each candidate online not based on who you know in government.
According to investigation, the Niger State programme has been hijacked by some elements in the office of the state Coordinator, Hon. Eunce Afiniki Dauda, which now operates on the premise of favoritism and giving privileges to candidates who have connections in government.
It was reliably gathered that some successful candidates enrolled for the programme from various local governments in the state are now been replaced with other people who did not initially applied for the program.
Also the school feeding programme of the Federal Government could not take off in the state as earlier scheduled because the list of contractors to handle the cooking was made selective with commissioners from each of the 25 local governments given the forms to pick their preferred cooks.
In a petition to the office of the vice president signed by one of the affected candidate Muhammed Musa and made available to the media, he alleged that the good intention of the Federal Government has hit the rocks in the state due to irregularities and non-challant attitude of the officials handling the programme in Niger state.
The petitioner declared: “We were among the successful candidates that were selected for the first batch of N-Power for which a screening exercise was conducted. After we went through all the process our names were omitted in the posting list and nothing was said to us in that regard”.
The petition titled ‘N-Power Saga in Niger State’ noted that all their complaints to the State NOA and N-Power coordinator have not yielded any positive results.
“We had series of discussions with them but nothing positive came out of it, therefore we have lost confidence in the state N-Power and NOA and call on the Federal Government to intervene without involving Niger State government as we don’t have trust in the methods adopted by Hon Afiniki Dauda”, the petition stressed.