FG pays N24bn to 413,630 beneficiaries of special public works scheme – Keyamo

By Egena Sunday Ode

About N24,000,817,800.00 billion has so far been paid to an approximate 413,630 beneficiaries of the 774,000 special public works scheme as at June 24th, 2021, Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo disclosed on Thursday.

Keyamo said the beneficiaries were drawn from rural communities and mostly itinerant workers to avoid the mistake of the past whereby participation in such programmes targeted at mostly rural dwellers were hijacked by urban dwellers..

He gave these statistics while featuring at the weekly ministerial briefing organised  by the Presidential Media Team in Abuja.

The Minister debunked claims that  the special works scheme may have failed due to initial delays to effect payment, saying it has attained  60 percent success rate.

Keyamo attributed the initial delays that greeted the programme to discrepancies noticed during the registration phase, especially with bank verification numbers.

He revealed that despite his attempts to ensure due diligence in the implementation of the programme, he discovered that some fraudulent Nigerians opened multiple bank accounts under a single BVN with intent to short change the system.

According to him, efforts to separate genuine applicants from those trying to fleece the scheme of its resources accounted for initial delays recorded in the kick off of the programme.

Keyamo also described the YouWin Programme, an innovative empowerment programme aimed at empowering Nigerian youths financially to establish their own businesses and to be self-reliant under the Goodluck Jonathan’s administration as purely for political patronage, alleging that  the opposition was completely sidelined.

The minister was responding to a question on why the same set of people were benefiting from all government Programme under the All Prpgressive Congress (APC) administration

He said: “On the same persons appearing  all the time in respect of all federal government programmes in some states. Whilst I don’t have the full facts regarding that, but I will not also in my true conscience, dispute your assertion. I will not because I know how the political terrain operates now, where you have godfathers everywhere as they are bringing programme of federal government, they hand it over to who they call the leader.

That is how it operates regrettably, any Programme in fact, they  capture it like bandits here in Abuja. Before it leaves Abuja as it is coming out straight from villa fresh government project, is captured here and handed over to their structures in the state. So I will not dispute it. I may not  have the true picture and the impact of it and whether it is actually true going on in every state, and the widespread nature of it.

“But like I said, What we try to do in this programme, that is why perhaps I faced some resistance, all of that we have put behind us. So I don’t want to wake up all those scandals but we moved on at the end of the day in peace, because everybody realised that we needed to serve the Nigerian people. But that was why we designed it that way to be multi-sectorial.  There is no programme ever before run by any government before us that you will see people who are not politicians brought into the selection process.

“I saw some opposition leaders complaining about the special public work that they didn’t get enough. And the question we asked them  was that while you were running your own PDP programme, did we even hear anything about it as politicians? Did we hear anything about it?

“Remember this one they ran, what  they called YouWin Programme then, it was just purely political patronage Programme. This one we try to say okay, religious leaders, senators where APC or PDP bring 30 persons. So whether opposition and all that was the kind of approach that we had. They can complain about inadequacy now that oh, we didn’t get enough numbers. In the past as opposition did we get any at all? Did we even know how?  People are complaining and that is to tell you the nature of President Buhari.

“There is the school feeding programme going around the country, it is purely in the hands of opposition in many states. The APC in those states  don’t even know how those school feeding  programme is being carried out.

But what would the President say? If you come to him  he will say they are all Nigerians. He will say  it is meant for all Nigerians. But party members will be complaining but he’s the father of the nation. He’s not the father of APC.