TheCable

The federal government says not less than 149, 669 of the 200,000 graduates engaged under the N-Power volunteer corps scheme have been paid a stipend of N30,000.

Laolu Akande, media aide of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, said this in a statement released on Tuesday.

He said the federal government has also approved N4,500 for 200,000 N-Power beneficiaries to purchase electronic devices which would be loaded with different applications to enhance their skills.

“This device grant is in conjunction with the Bank of Industry (BoI) which has extended an asset finance of 20 months to each of the 200,000 N-Power beneficiaries,” the statement said.

“While each of the beneficiaries after being verified would select their choice of device among nine different BoI pre-approved vendors, the price ranges from N3,000 to N6,700 monthly deductions for the next 20 months.

“Therefore, in some cases, the N4,500 device grant would cover the full monthly deduction cost while in other cases, the graduate authorises BoI to deduct the additional differential cost from their monthly stipends depending on the device chosen.”

According to the statement, about 112,475 of the N-Power graduate beneficiaries received the N30,000 monthly stipend in December while the number rose to almost 150,000 in January and February.

The remaining 50,000 of the 200,000 proposed beneficiaries, Akande noted, were those who could not be paid for various reasons.