Mr. Laolu Akande
Tobi Soniyi in Abuja

The presidency on Tuesday gave an assurance that the beneficiaries of the social protection programmes promised by President Muhammadu Buhari would not be chosen on party affiliation.
The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice-President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, gave the assurance in an interview with State House correspondents inside the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
Akande said since Buhari is the President of Nigeria and not of the All Progressives Congress (APC) alone, the present administration had put measures in place to ensure that diligent efforts are made to develop objective criteria to select the beneficiaries.
He said since the government in place is that of change, Nigerians should expect fairness in the selection process.
While saying that beneficiaries would be selected per state, he said the selection could not be based on politician consideration since the APC does not control all the states.
Akande said: “The president is the president of the nation and not of a particular political party only.
“Diligent efforts are being made to ensure that the government develops objective criteria for the programmes.
“We have decided that the beneficiaries will be picked per state and you are aware that the APC does not control all the states of the federation.
“Each state will have their quota. We are committed to a fair and even distribution that is not based on political consideration. We do not play around change. Nigerians expect fairness in the exercise and they will get it.”
Akande reiterated the presidency’s position that the social protection plan had been segmented into six plans that include Teach Nigeria, a youth empowerment programme, conditional cash transfer, homegrown school feeding programme, free education for science, technology, engineering and mathematics students in tertiary institutions and the micro-credit scheme.
While saying that 500,000 teachers would be hired, trained and deployed to public schools by the federal government under the Teach Nigeria segment, he also said provision had been made for the training of young people that are not graduate for skill acquisition under the youth empowerment scheme.
Under conditional cash transfer which, according to him, is for extremely poor and vulnerable Nigerians, Akande said N5,000 would be paid monthly to one million Nigerians.
He added that one decent and nutritious meal per day would be provided for primary school pupils.
He said the federal government decided to make the feeding programme a homegrown because of the mistake of the past administration.
Under the micro credit scheme, Akande said in addition to the N200billion set aside by the Central Bank of Nigeria, the federal government will give N60billion to one million artisans and market women and men in form of soft loans.
About The Nigerian Blogger
0 comments :
Post a Comment