Posted on: 03:24 Tue, 01 Mar 2016



The Presidency on Monday said President Muhammadu
Buhari never promised to pay unemployed graduates N5,000
monthly.

The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media
and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, said this in an interview
with State House correspondents.

Akande, whose boss, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo supervises
the economy, spoke while reacting to statement credited to
Buhari in which the President ruled out the possibility of his
government paying N5,000 monthly allowance to unemployed
youths in the country as promised by his party, the All
Progressives Congress, ahead of the 2015 presidential
election.

He said the provision the government made in the 2016
Budget currently before the National Assembly is to pay
N5,000 monthly to one million extremely poor Nigerians, and
not the unemployed graduates.

He said the promise to the poor still stands.

He explained that a provision for half a trillion naira had
been made in the budget for social investment, which he said
included the payment for the extremely poor.

Akande said, “The budget for 2016 which has been submitted
to the National Assembly has made an allocation of half a
trillion naira, the first time in the history of this country’s
budget where you have that huge chunk of money allocated
for social investment.

“In that N500bn which is half a trillion naira, close to about
20 per cent of the entire budget, there are six social safety net
programmes.

“One of them is the Conditional Cash Transfer where
government is going to pay N5,000 monthly to the vulnerable
and extremely poor Nigerians. That promise stands.

“The President never promised to pay unemployed graduates
N5,000; the President never made that promise and the
government never made that claim that it will pay N5,000 to
unemployed graduates.

“The programme for unemployed graduates is the direct
creation of half a million teaching jobs so that they will be
trained; 500, 000 unemployed graduates will be trained to
teach and they will be deployed to teach, while they are
looking for their career paths or jobs. That still stands!
“In addition to that, there is also a scheme to train 370, 000
non-graduate youths for skill acquisition and vocational
training. During the time of that training, they will also be
paid.

Source: PunchNg