– Minister of State for Budget and National Planning Zainab Ahmed says the federal government has released first set of funds for the implementation of the N5,000 monthly stipends and other social programmes
– Zainab says the programmes will also include lending money to entrepreneurs, feeding primary school kids and training plus employing of around 5000,000 university graduates
Minster of state for budget and national planning Mrs Zainab Ahmed
The federal government has confirmed the release of N25billion funds for the payment of N5,000 monthly stipends to unemployed graduates.
Premium Times reports that this was made known on Wednesday, October 26 by the Minister of State for Budget and National Planning Zainab Ahmed during a media chat after the meeting of the Federal Executive Council.
The funds, she said, was for the social intervention programmes of the administration and she added that an additional N40billion would also soon be released to the initial N25billion.
“We have approval from the steering committee in sum of N150 billion.
“So far N25 billion has been released into the account and there is another N40 billion that is in the process of being released into the account,” she said.
She said the programmes are in four categories which are the home-grown school feeding programme which is targeting 5.5 million primary school pupil in all the states of the federation from primary1 to 3.
The second is job creation training for 500,000 university graduates that will be paid N30,000 monthly for two years after they have been drafted to communities to work for the government in different vocations.
The third is what she called the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) where one million care givers will be given N5000 monthly over a period of two years.
“Focus has been given to the extremely poor and vulnerable in our society and special emphasis is being placed to providing as many as possible in the north-eastern part of the country where we have a lot of internally displaced persons,” she said.
The final category is the enterprise promotion programme (EIP) in which loans ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 will be given to 1.6 million people including market women, traders, artisans, small
Businesses and youth through the Bank of Industry (BOI) at repayment rate of three to six months at five per cent interest rate.
Meanwhile, the Anglican Communion has pleaded with President Muhammadu Buhari to seek means the federal government can alleviate the suffering of Nigerians.
The Anglican Church, Ijumu Diocese in Kogi state called on the president to stop paying lip service to federal government’s plans and show sincere commitment to promises made to Nigeria before election.
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