The federal government has admitted owing 12, 000 beneficiaries of its youth empowerment programme, N-Power.
Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq, said 12,000 N-Power beneficiaries are yet to receive their stipends.
Farouq had initially denied that the federal government was owing beneficiaries of the programme.
In May, the Minister, while reacting to an allegation, had declared that all beneficiaries had been paid their monthly stipend.
The beneficiaries, however, responded by insisting some of them were not paid.
However, the Minister while speaking during the Presidential task force on COVID-19 daily briefing in Abuja, yesterday had recanted her earlier comment.
She admitted that government has not paid all beneficiaries.
According to Farouq: “As far as the ministry is concerned, we have paid N-Power beneficiaries that have been verified and recommended for payment. We have 500,000 N-Power volunteers.
“Those who are claiming that they have not been paid, we are looking into these issues with the Office of the Account General of the Federation.
“We have had issues around migrating from the platform that we used to operate to the Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) platform. So, these are the administrative issues that have hindered the payment of some of the volunteers.
“There are about 12,000 of them based on our record and as I am speaking with you, the permanent secretary of the ministry is in the office of the accountant general to sort out these issues and once we get the report, we will make it available to all.”
