The federal government says it has commenced arrears payment to N-Power beneficiaries.
Betta Edu, minister of humanitarian affairs and poverty alleviation, made this known on Thursday while speaking on Channels TV’s Politics Today programme.
She said payment to N-Power beneficiaries is ongoing.
“We were in the office yesterday up until the early hours of this morning, just to ensure that young people get monies which they have been owed from the last government,” she said.
“So, N-Power beneficiaries across the nation, I am sure you can attest to the fact that you have started seeing your money in your accounts and this process will continue until the last person who indeed has served is being paid.
“And of course, all of this is being restructured to ensure that we reduce unemployment and create jobs for Nigerians.”
Edu said the processes are carried out transparently, adding that the ministry will deploy technology to ensure that the names of beneficiaries of all social intervention programmes are accessible on a dedicated portal.
“The Renewed Hope N-Power has not been relaunched yet. We are still trying to deal with the baggage from the previous years,” the minister said.
“So, these are persons who were owed monies for a few months. Some were owed for three months, some were owed for 6 months, and some owed for eight months.
“We used to have a consultant who used to manage the payments of these monies to the N-Power beneficiaries. However, the monies were being held up with the consultants for months without paying the beneficiaries.
“So, what the government did was to recover the money back into the government’s TSA CBN account and now started scrutiny of the beneficiaries which took us this while to do.”
Edu appealed to N-Power beneficiaries to exercise patience.