A ProActive Northern Initiatives (PANI) has described the decision of the federal government to suspend the N-Power programme as ill-timed, retrogressive, injurious and capable of worsening the fragile security situation in Northern Nigeria.
The decision was described as hasty and anti-people for a programme that has brought succour to millions of Nigerian households, particularly in the North.
Speaking in an interview in Kaduna on Monday, the convener of the group, Comrade Isa Aliyu Musa, listed several gains and achievements of the N-Power, which it noted had benefitted over 800,000 youths in 19 Northern states.
According to them, the gains included poverty alleviation, skill acquisition, job opportunities, prevention of youth restiveness, and even distribution of the nation’s wealth.
Comrade Musa eulogized the leadership skills, patriotism, accountability and zeal of the former minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Sa’adiya Umar Farooq, under whose supervision he disclosed the past administration was able to initiate and successfully implement several social interventions and poverty alleviation programmes.
“Some of which were the conditional cash transfer to vulnerable households, school feeding and empowerment programmes.
In collaboration with international relief agencies, he said the former minister had provided food and essential materials to internally displaced persons due to banditry, insurgency, flooding and other natural disasters.
The convener added that enrolment in primary schools and access to education increased astronomically due to the school feeding programme of Mrs Farooq, who personally went round to monitor the progress of the initiative, which he noted received wide commendations within the country and abroad.
“Healthy feeding by pregnant and breastfeeding mothers was another giant feat promoted by former minister Sa’adiya Umar Farooq through providing and distributing food supplements and lectures on promoting good health and a hygienic environment.
“We expect the present administration to focus on expanding the programme for effectiveness so that more youth and households will be captured as beneficiaries.
“But instead, the Tinubu administration outrightly suspended the programme with such haste without weighing the repercussions of such an ill-timed action that is capable of throwing several of our youth and dependants into idleness and difficulties.
“We believe suspending the programme will further worsen the precarious security situation in the north and expose our disengaged youth to the danger of potential tools of possible recruitment by insurgents and bandits,” he lamented.
The group wondered why the North, which gave the present administration the highest votes with which it rode to power, should be targeted by several policies and decisions taken so far in the past three months, including the suspension of the N-Power and other unpopular actions meant to impoverish the masses in the region.
To this end, the Northern group called on the minister of Humanitarian, Betta Edu, to reconsider her decision and advise the government on the need to sustain the program in order to improve it.
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