TheCable

Laolu Akande, spokesman of Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo, says the N30,000 salary offered to each of the newly-recruited graduates is “better than nothing”.

Akande said this while responding to TheCable’s question on why the federal government would place graduates on such a meager income.

“Is it not better than nothing?” he asked.

In the buildup to the 2015 election, the All Progressives Congress (APC) had promised to create jobs every year.

While a version of the promise said 720,000 jobs, another pledged 3 million.

Critics had attacked the government for not fulfilling that promise since it came into office.

But in his first democracy day broadcast, President Muhammadu Buhari promised that the recruitment process for N-power Teachers Corps, which targeted 500,000 unemployed graduates would soon begin.

Few weeks later, the presidency announced applications for the corps.

In about 36 hours, npower.gov.ng, the internet portal through which applications were being submitted, had received 35 million hits, out of which 403,528 registrations were successful.

“We are very pleased that the registrations have been taking place without any hitches or system failures, considering the volume of response. All together the website has received over 35 million hits since Saturday midnight,” Afolabi Imoukhede, senior special assistant to the president on job creation, had said in a statement.

The statement quoted Akande to have said: “We have been very impressed by the enthusiastic response to the call for applications. As at noon on Monday June 13, only 36 hours after the launch of the portal, 403,528 applicants have successfully registered on the site and were in the middle of completing the application process.”

According to the government, N-power Teachers Corps is subdivided into N-power Agro, N-power health, N-power teach, and N-power Community education, which is expected to engage and train 500,000 young unemployed graduates.

The first batch of 200,000 have been employed.