N-Power, N4, 500 to be added to beneficiaries monthly salary for purchasing tablets.

The Federal Government has approved an additional N4500 monthly subsidy to all the 200,000 N-Power beneficiaries to enable them purchase an electronic tablet that will further enhance their skills.

Mr. Laolu Akande, Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President, Office of the Vice President, disclosed this on Tuesday when he gave an update on the Social Investment Programmes of the present administration.

The 200,000 beneficiaries, who are all graduates, are engaged and deployed by the Federal Government across the 36 states and FCT under its N-Power Volunteer Corps.

The programme is one of the present government schemes to empower young graduates and reduce unemployment in the country. The participants receive monthly stipends of N30, 000 from government.

Akande said, “AT the last count 149, 669 Nigerian graduates of the 200,000 engaged by the Federal Government under the N-Power Volunteer Corps are now collecting their monthly stipends of N30, 000 every month as they have been physically verified and deployed across the 36 states and FCT.”

According to him, the additional N4500 monthly is meant to assist the beneficiaries purchase an “electronic tablet which would be loaded with different applications that would further enhance the skills of the beneficiaries and afford them additional training opportunities during the two-year duration of the job program.“

He said, “This tablet grant is in conjunction with the Bank of Industry (BoI) who has extended an asset finance of 20 months to each of the 200,000 N-Power beneficiaries.

“While each of the beneficiaries after being verified would select their choice of tablet amongst nine different BOI pre-approved vendors, the price ranges from N3,000 to N6,700 monthly deductions for the next 20 months.

“Therefore in some cases the N4500 tablet grant would cover the full monthly deduction cost while in other cases the graduate authorizes BOI to deduct the additional differential cost from their monthly stipends depending on the tablet chosen.”

Akande further revealed that six of the nine BOI pre-approved vendors are indigenous local brands in pursuit of the Buhari administration’s push for local content.

He added that about 100,000 graduate N-Power beneficiaries have completed their orders for the devices and that the BOI is in charge of effecting the orders made.