We write to express our displeasure and disappointment to the stance of the Federal Government of Nigeria towards our demands for better permanent and pensionable offers, most especially with reference to the repetitive insistence of the SSA to the president on job creation and one of the major stakeholders of the Npower Initiative Scheme, Mr Afolabi Imoukhuede, that we should quit demanding for permanency.
On many occasions, Mr Afolabi Imoukhuede has maintained that the scheme was tailored to run only for two years, and it was only meant to be an empowerment and not an employment opportunity, and as a result of that, we are advised to make judicious use of the scheme by saving some amounts of money from the stipends paid to us. This has been in reaction to our agitations for permanency from both the state and federal government.
While we appreciate Mr Afolabi for keeping reminding us of the terms and conditions of the scheme and equally appreciate the federal government for even deeming it fit to initiate the scheme, we think it will also be fair to remind Mr Afolabi and whosoever wishes to know some germaine and pertinent realities that are attached to our advocacy for permanency.
We wish to remind Mr Afolabi the promises made by his Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, during the 2015 presidential election campaigns.
Apart from the empowerment of youths and women with an access to well workable loans which will facilitate the creation of 1,000,000 new jobs every year, Mr President also promised to employ 720,000 youths across states. This was one of the cardinal and rallying points of his manifestos that convinced most of us to give him our supports. But unfortunately, as witnessed in previous administrations, we are only left with a supposed empowerment program without capital seeds or take off grants. We see this as an unfulfilled campaign promise and a deceit to the teaming Nigerian youths. In the face of such habitual deceits and manipulation of facts from our successive governments, we are forced to raise some fundamental questions which appear to reflect and depict the pathetic situation of our fate in this country today:
– Is our generation only good for schemes and empowerments that have no provisions for our employability?
– What is the essence of a poverty alleviating scheme that can not even guarantee the future of the youths it claims to have empowered?
– What is the essence of our 18 years of rigorous schooling if we can not gainfully be employed after graduation?
– Why does this regime refuse to recruit and employ a desperate and hopeless teaming youths despite the alarming and increasing rate of unemployment in the country?
– We ask, as our governments continue to use and dump of the youths with ill-conceived and improperly planned schemes, what is our fate again and who shall bail our generation out in the face of this uncertainty?
We also wish to remind who cares to know that during their campaigns, this regime also promised to pay a token amount of N5,000 monthly to the discharged but yet to be employed graduates for a period of 12 months (one year) before they get a sustainable job. But this promise, like the first one mentioned, has gone into the oblivion of unfulfilled and abandoned promises.
In the same vain of lies, propaganda and deceits from this current regime, we have noted with a great dismay and stupefaction that the presidency has gone to various international fora to claim that the Buhari led administration has already employed 200,000 youths and still in the process to recruit another 300,000 as second batch. We regret but we can not continue to keep quiet in the face of all these monumental lies.
A good government should have provisions for the teaming youths that graduate from our tertiary institutions on quarterly basis every year, but our governments are unfortunately not ready to listen to our plights. We want a government that will take us into consideration and will have a long lasting and an all inclusive plan for us, not the ones that will continue to lure and deceive us with temporary and unproductive schemes.
We can not continue to undergo scheme after scheme – Teachers’ Training, YouWin, Sure-P, Npower, et al – all in the name of ill-conceived empowerments that waste away our time and keep accumulating our ages.
Going by the true definition of terms, an empowerment scheme is meant to train beneficiaries and sponsor or support them with take off grants or capital seeds after the scheme. You don’t tell them to save and establish themselves from the stipends paid to them for service rendered in the course of the program.
In a recent life Facebook chat conducted by Mr Afolabi, he was heard comparing Npower to NYSC. With due respect to his office, the two programs have different visions and objectives, going by the philosophy that initiated each one of them, therefore, they can’t be matched together.
NYSC is a compulsory national youth service while Npower is a voluntary paid engagement which was supposed to be an empowerment scheme. They differ in terms of conceptualization.
We wish to state categorically that our advocacy for permanency is of paramount concern to us as volunteers, just like the second term ambition to President Muhammadu Buhari and all other politicians seeking for elective or nominative posts. Permanency or better still Job Provision is the common thought on the mind of an average volunteer at this material time and the only language we understand. Any other talk aside that is distraction. We want a government that will guarantee and secure us permanent jobs, not temporary schemes.
We are not issuing out threats, but we wish to inform whosoever cares to know that we have already established bodies nationwide, and well coordinated structures in all the states of the federation.
Conclusively, we wish to appreciate President Muhammadu Buhari and his vice, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, for implementing the scheme, we are very grateful. We have also done our best by discharging our duties to our host communities. The scheme has been a wonderful experience for us, and indeed, a succour to a hopeless and decades impoverished youths, a blessing to many abandoned families, and the hope for an hitherto forgotten generation…
Sir, sustaining it should be the order of the day, for we cannot afford to go back to the street. The Nigerian Youths are looking up to you, bail our generation out, give us permanent jobs, we are tired of temporary schemes without capital seeds or pay off grants.
Thank you all.
concernednpowervolunteers@gmail.com
Cc: – The Federal Government Of Nigeria
– The General Public
– The Print Media
– All N-power Volunteers
