The federal government has iexpended over N48bn in the feeding of 560, 000 school children, N-Power, Trader moni and other programmes of the Social Investment Programme (SIP) in the paste five years in Niger state.
The Programme focal person in Niger state, Barrister Amina Gwer stated this in a statement made available to Blueprint at the weekend in Minna.
Gwer explained that while the sum of N11, 041, 290, 000 was spent on 12, 171 beneficiaries under the N-Power Programme, another sum of over 12.2billion was expended on the home grown school feeding programme within the period under review.
According to her, “over 560, 000 children are currently being fed under the Home Grown School Feeding Programme in the state in addition to creating jobs for residents. In the area of creating jobs, which is one of the focus points, 5, 791 cooks have been engaged. 846 aggregations have also been engaged. Others are 6, 368 soya cheese producers and 1,146 local suppliers. The Federal Government has so far injected N12, 226, 082, 400. 00 into the programme in the state.”
She explained that the N-Power Programme started with 4,467 beneficiaries in 2016 while another batch of 7,704 beneficiaries were recruited in 2017.
She said, “This brought the total number of beneficiaries to 12,171 who were paid N30,000 monthly stipends. The financial implication from 2016 to 2017 is about N11, 041, ,290.000 paid by the Federal Government.”
According to her the implementation of GEEP, the programmes which enables beneficiaries to access micro credit through Bank of Industry has been very successful in the state with over 62, 112 beneficiaries in market moni , trader moni and other soft loans to the sum of over N950.6bn.
