Presidency explains how 200,000 persons were selected for N-Power jobs

The Senior Special Assistant, SSA, on Media and Publicity in the Office of the Vice President, Laolu Akande, on Sunday explained how 200,000 Nigerians were selected in the first batch of the N-Power Volunteer Corps, NPVC, asserting that the selection was not only fair and transparent, but carefully put together.

He clarified this while giving an update on the NPVC which is now advancing with assignment of beneficiaries to their places of deployments in their states of residence. He explained that 40 per cent of those who applied for the N-Power Teach and Agric were first selected, followed by 50 per cent of those who applied for the Health category, all based on an assessment test.

Akande then explained that to mitigate the adverse socio-economic circumstances in the North- East, an additional 4,800 applicants from the region were selected with Borno State getting 1200 and Adamawa, Yobe, Taraba 800 each and Bauchi and Gombe 600 each.

He stated that all the states and the FCT, through the focal persons they appointed, have since received the list of the 200,000, and now working on deploying the beneficiaries to their places of assignment.

The SSA also explained that by using the BVN, which is one of the most viable means of identification in the country today, there is hardly any way anything fraudulent can sail through in the process.

“We are confident that the selection process, all the way through with BVN, and physical verification at the points of deployment in the states and the local government areas, are both transparent and impossible to abhor ghost beneficiaries, or any kind of fraud,” he said.

Akande said already 93% of those selected have been screened through the BVN, with the commendable assistance of the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc, NIBSS, and only authentic and verifiable beneficiaries will be paid the N30,000 monthly stipends starting December.

Responding to reports about random searches conducted on social media platforms, the SSA dismissed them, saying such cannot be better than “biometric identification we have secured through the BVN.”

“Besides the BVN, there is going to be physical verification, through an in-built component in our selection system that requires that information submitted online during the application would have to be authenticated at the point of deployment across the country, including verification of academic credentials and residence status.”

According to him, just as is normal when someone gets a job or even admission to school, he or she would proceed to present papers that have been submitted during application for verification. “This is also going to be like that, so claims about some applicants claiming to be residents of states would be dealt with if it turns out such claims are false. If an applicant cannot supply proof of residence, the selection is terminated.”

He went on to assure that in a local government such as Abadam in Borno State, where there have been claims that non-residents applied and were selected; that such people would have to show up for verification on the spot.

Akande added that there was also a likelihood that a number of applicants may have input Abadam inadvertently considering that Abadam LGA is number one on the list of LGAs under the list as posted on the N-Power portal. “There is a good chance,” he continued, “that some applicants may have failed to complete the forms online accurately.”

He stated that such errors are being reviewed and anyone found not to be resident in the LGA would be removed and replaced using the waiting list of applicants, adding that, “an important aspect of the application was that applicants were told in clear terms that any false information would be grounds for disqualification.”