The President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), has ordered the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development to increase beneficiaries of the N-Power programme by five million.

N-Power is a youth empowerment scheme of the Federal Government under the National Social Investment Programme that provides a platform for skills acquisition and development for hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries.

The Humanitarian Affairs Minister, Sadiya Farouq, said the President directed her ministry to accommodate more N-Power beneficiaries, adding that Batch-C of the scheme, which admitted over one million persons, had been inaugurated.

She disclosed this at the handing over of feeding utensils by the humanitarian ministry to beneficiaries of the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, another NSIP scheme, in Nasarawa State.

In her remarks at the event, which was made available to our correspondent in Abuja, Farouq said the NSIP was the government’s key social protection mechanism for many vulnerable groups.

She said, “We have recently inaugurated the Batch C N-Power scheme, which is aimed at helping over one million unemployed Nigerian youths to gain useful experience and technical skills that they can convert into small businesses to further support themselves.

“This is in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s directives for the expansion of the programme to accommodate an additional five million beneficiaries.”

The minister, who was represented by a Deputy Director in her ministry, Daguleng Ishaku, said a total of 195,000 utensils were handed over to Nasarawa to deepen the state’s school feeding programme.

She said, “The school feeding programme for which we have gathered today provides one free meal to over nine million pupils in primary schools across the country.

READ ALSO FG increases prices of electricity meters

“In Nasarawa State we are providing funds to the state selected aggregators and 2,768 vendors and to feed 194,649 pupils, in 745 schools across the 13 Local Government Areas. In that value chain alone hundreds of jobs are created every day and people are earning.”

The Focal Person, NSIP, Nasarawa State, Usman Jibrin, explained that the programme started in Nasarawa in 2019 with a total number of 1,200 cooks and 86,329 pupils.

“At present, we have a total number of 2,768 cooks and 194,649 pupils benefitting from the programme. A total amount N1.498bn was expended in Nasarawa under the programme from January 2019 to October 2021,” he said.

Jibrin said the fund was provided by the Federal Government, adding that it had positively impacted on the lives of all beneficiaries in the value chain ranging from the vendors, suppliers, cooks and pupils.