Npower is not politicised — Presidency

Afolabi Imoukhuede, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Job Creation and Youth Empowerment, has said that although N-power is a political campaign promise of All Progressives Congress, it is not politicised.
Imoukhuede said at the News Agency of Nigeria Forum in Abuja on Tuesday that the programme was one which had received the endorsement of every state governor irrespective of party affiliation.
He said that N-power was part of the Social Investment Programmes of the APC-led Federal Government aimed at checking youth unemployment.
Imoukhuede said that no politics was introduced in the deployment of beneficiaries.
He said: “We do not ask for party affiliation or which political party is ruling in the state you come from before you can be recruited into the scheme.
“We deploy all the volunteers to the 774 local government areas in the country, including the Federal Capital Territory; we do not care whether you are APC, PDP or APGA.”
He said that Rivers, a PDP controlled state, had the highest number of volunteers in 2016, adding that its recruitment process had been very transparent.
Imoukhuede said the programme had benefitted 500,000 graduates, while the non-graduate component had enrolled no fewer than 50,000 persons.
He said that some 10,000 the beneficiaries had exited voluntarily or had been forced out because of misconduct.
Imoukhuede said some of those who left did so after getting new jobs or engaged in self-employment, while 1,000 persons were removed because of absenteeism.
He said that the scheme had devised a means of detecting erring volunteers and gave them 45 days to change their attitude to remain on the programme.