200,000 Selected Unemployed Graduates To Start Work Soon – VP Osinbajo

150,000 to teach | *30,000 as Agric
extension workers | *20,000 as public
health workers

The inaugural set of 200,000 unemployed
graduates already selected in the first
batch of the N-power volunteer job and
training scheme of the Buhari Social
Investment Programmes should start work
in the next two weeks.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN made
this disclosure over the weekend while
speaking at the Apostolic Coalition Summit
in Lagos.
According to him, as a stop gap measure,
the Buhari administration is engaged in
direct creation of jobs, including the plan to
create 500, 000 jobs for unemployed
graduates.
He explained that the programme should
have commenced “as at October 31, 2016,
but is delayed on account of the fact that
we are trying to get as many of the
equipments that we require,” referring to
the tablets that would be given to all the
500,000 N-power undergraduate
participants.
The Vice President also explained that
efforts are being made “to ensure that all
across the country, we are able to provide
those opportunities as we promised.”
Already 200,000 unemployed Nigerians
have been selected, including 150,000 who
would teach and serve in their
communities. The balance is made up of
30,000 who would serve as Agric Extension
Workers and 20,000 who would serve as
public health workers.
Each of the unemployed graduates would
get a N30,000 monthly stipend, and also
get an electronic tablet that would be
packaged with several applications that
would train and empower the participants.
Vice President reiterated that the N-Power
scheme was launched as a volunteer
programme “to create temporary
opportunities for young graduates, to at
least be doing something and many of
them would be volunteer teachers, health
officials and extension workers, who will
earn a stipend.”
He added that the participants will also
have a device “and that device has a lot of
training brochures, different forms of
training brochures and it’s also a device
that enables them to be able to, on a
continuous basis, learn different things,
some code-writing, some entrepreneurial
skills. There are lot of varieties of material
that can be learned on the device. The
device is also a means of communicating
with them wherever they may be in the
country.”
He noted that “at the moment close to a
million graduates have registered on the
volunteered scheme and we should be
doing the first 200,000 in the next 14 days
or so, we should be able to get started with
the first 200,000 across the country.”
While the federal government would pay the
200,000 directly, state governments would
play an active role in their deployment to
the needed areas. The first batch of 200,000
selected volunteers are also being screened
using the BVN so as to properly set-up the
payment of their monthly stipends.

Laolu Akande
Senior Special Assistant on Media &
Publicity
Office of the Vice President