TheCable

The federal government says it has budgeted N5,000 each for one million “extremely poor” Nigerians, as a total of N500 billion has been allocated for social investment in the 2016 budget.

Insisting that President Muhammadu Buhari and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) never promised to pay unemployed graduates N5,000, the administration said it still has plans to empower those who do not have jobs.

Laolu Akande, spokesman to Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, disclosed this in an interview with state house correspondents on Monday.

“The budget for 2016, which has been submitted to the national assembly, has made an allocation of half a trillion naira, the first time in the history of this country’s budget where you have that huge chunk of money allocated for social investment,” he said.

“In that 500 billion, which is half a trillion naira, close to about 20 per cent of the entire budget, there are six social safety-net programmes. And one of them is the conditional cash transfer where government is going to pay N5000 monthly to the vulnerable and extremely poor Nigerians. That promise stands.

“The president never promised to pay unemployed graduates N5000; the president never made that promise and the government never made that claim that it will pay N5000 to unemployed graduates.

“The programme for unemployed graduates is the direct creation of half a million teaching jobs so that they will be trained; 500000 unemployed graduates will be trained to teach and they will be deployed to teach, while they are looking for their career paths or jobs. That still stands!

“In addition to that, there is also a scheme to train 370, 000 non-graduate youth for skill acquisition and vocational training. During the time of that training, they will also be paid.

“So, the president did not say that he would be giving unemployed graduates N5000. The N5000 monthly which is already in the budget is for the vulnerable Nigerians and the extremely poor, and this year by the grace of God, once the budget is okay, one million extremely poor Nigerians will receive N5000 monthly.”