State’s minister of Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, says the 774,000 special works scheme would have been hijacked by members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), save for the defiance of President Muhammadu Buhari.
The Special Public Works Programme was launched in 2021 by the Federal Government and aimed to employ 1000 youths across the 774 local government areas for three months.
Keyamo made this disclosure at the weekly Ministerial Media Chat at the Presidential villa in Abuja on Thursday.
The Minister also berated the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who have criticised the modus operandi of the ministry.
“Remember this one they (PDP) 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 being 30. So whether opposition and all that 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.”
He said although the party members are complaining of being sidelined, the President is the father of the nation and not the father of APC.
“Before the election of 2019, many of our APC members were mad. They were mad that this programme should be the APC so that we can use it to run elections. But the President said no, the President will just laugh despite all that, they were threatening that we are going to lose the election. PDP members were using this programme to empower their people in this state, APC had nothing to empower. Didn’t the President win? He won, he won more people to his side by that.”
Keyamo also announced 400 thousand participants have received N60,000, being the payment for the three months.
Speaking further, he said the scheme was aimed at empowering Nigerians and cushioning the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, has seen 413,630 persons paid N60,000 each.
According to him, some payments that have bounced back are owing to BVN challenges.
Keyamo said in total N24.817 billion has been distributed to Nigerians so far, adding that an extension might be requested to meet a target of 500 thousand persons for the first phase of the programme.
