The Federal Government has approved the disengagement of two thousand, five hundred and twenty-five beneficiaries of the N-Power Programme for absconding from their primary places of assignment.
It also warned that acts of dereliction of duty, indolence, absenteeism and indiscipline on the part of volunteers would continue to be dealt with decisively in line with the rules of engagement.


It would be recalled that the N-Power Programme was introduced in 2016 by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration as a job enhancement scheme aimed at imbibing the learn-work-entrepreneurship culture in Nigerian youths within the ages of eighteen to thirty-five for graduates and non-graduates.


About five hundred thousand youths spread across the seven hundred and seventy-four local government areas of the country are currently enrolled in the programme and have since been deployed to teach in public schools, act as health workers in primary health centres, as agricultural extension advisors to smallholder farmers in the communities and as community tax liaison officers.


Confirming the development, the Communications Manager, National Social Investment Office, Justice Bibiye, said that eighteen thousand, six hundred and seventy-four other beneficiaries of the initiative had voluntarily resigned, having secured permanent employment.


Bibiye said in a statement that reports from a few states, however, showed that some beneficiaries of the programme were said to have stayed away for long periods of time from their primary places of assignment, adding that this had led to the need for continued action against those undermining the smooth implementation of the Federal Government’s social intervention initiative.