The administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has started plans to pay the N5000 monthly allowance to the unemployed youths

The administration of President Muhammadu
Buhari has started plans to pay the N5000
monthly allowance to the about N25 million
unemployed youths in the country by 2016.
The All Progressives Congress had promised
before the election that it would address the
issue of unemployment by paying
unemployed youths N5000 and also introduce
a feeding programme to schools.
The Peoples Democratic Party had in a
motion called on the president to immediately
fulfil his campaign promise by implementing
the N5000 payment to unemployed youths
but the move was rejected by APC senators.

The Punch however reports that the federal
government had started plan on Monday,
November 16 to pay the unemployed youths
and also implement the school feeding
programme and this will be covered in the
2016 budget.
Some officials have also been saddled with
the responsibility of finding out the accurate
number of youths that will benefit from the
scheme.
A top government official who spoke on the
condition of anonymity said the scheme had
to be done well so that it would not be
mismanaged and hijacked by politicians.
“You know that if the scheme is left open-ended,
even Nigerians, who are employed and are by no
means vulnerable, will still struggle to benefit
from it.
“You also know that if not properly handled,
politicians will hijack the scheme and it will
become a means of settling their constituents,
whether they qualify to benefit from it or not.
This is why the government will come up with
data on the beneficiaries very soon.”
The official said the scheme might not take
off in January or February of next year as it
was important to ascertain the number of
youths that deserve the payment and how
much it would cost.
Mr. Laolu Akande who is the senior special
adviser to the vice president on media and
publicity confirmed that work was already on
to identify the beneficiaries.
He said: “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.”
According to the Ministry of Finance and that
of Budget and National Planning, the full
implementation of the scheme would cost the
federal government N125bn monthly and a
total sum of N1.5tr annually
Another anonymous source said that apart
from the N5000 unemployment payment and
the school feeding programme, the
government also planned to take care of
Internally Displaced Persons.
He said : “We have started working on the
budget since September this year at the
Ministry of Budget and Planning.
“Since the ministry is the one coordinating the
plans of government, what we did was to
identify six priority programmes by pillars which
have already been communicated to all the
Ministries, Departments and Agencies of
government.

“So while preparing the medium term plan, what
we did was to look at the manifesto of the APC
and prepare our plan based on what its
campaign promises were to Nigerians before
the elections.
“And since social development is a key aspect
of its campaign, we identified social protection
schemes such as the conditional cash transfer
and the school feeding programme as key to the
programmes for 2016.”
President Buhari canceled the SURE P
Programme which was also aimed at helping
Nigerian youths.Christopher Kolade who
headed the programme before he risigned
said it had been hijacked by politicians and
the true beneficiaries did not benefit from it.