In the first quarter of the year, during the its presidential campaign, the All Progressive Congress (APC) made a lot of promises to Nigerians, and now the chicken has come home to roost.
One of these promises is the now-contentious N5,000 monthly stipend for unemployed youth.
APC assured Nigerians that if their candidate, President Muhammadu Buhari, was voted into the prestigious office of the President of the Federation.
After coming under intense criticism and pressure of late, the APC appear to be ready to redeem some of their promises.
The presidency is set to bring to fruition its promise to pay over 25 million youth that are unemployed in the country the sum of N5,000 monthly.
According to a report by Punch Newspapers, the payment is expected to commence in 2016.
Also to be implemented in 2015 is the free meal scheme for schools promised alongside the allowance for unemployed youths.
The report says the government has selected certain officials to determine in precise terms the number of unemployed youth that would be brought into this payment scheme.
The verification of the number of youths to be involved is important for the government to ensure that the programme is not sabotaged by selfish individuals as some Nigerians would want to cunningly benefit from the scheme, even though they are employed and not vulnerable.
The government also needs to curb politicians who would want to illegally benefit from the scheme and as such would be coming up with data on beneficiaries very soon.
Laolu Akande, the Senior Special Assistant to the Vice-President on Media and Publicity reportedly confirmed that the identification of the beneficiaries of this schemes is ongoing and the government hopes to kick-start the process in 2016.
“Work is ongoing on various aspects of the implementation of that social investment plan, including the identification of those that will benefit from it. Very soon, we shall be concluding work on that; that is a very important aspect of the programme.
“The plan of the government is to start as much as possible in the area of social investment, and conditional cash transfer is part of it.
“It is the plan of the government to explore how to start this with the 2016 budget.”
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