Some beneficiaries of N-Power, a federal government programme aimed at supporting unemployed young Nigerians, have complained about unpaid stipends.

Two former N-Power Batch C beneficiaries, who spoke with FIJ on Saturday, revealed that they had not received their monthly stipends for the last five months of their engagement.

“I joined the N-Power programme to teach in Taraba State late last year. As I speak with you, many people on the programme, including myself, have not been paid for five months,” Manasseh Mathias told FIJ.

“I was supposed to receive a N30,000 monthly stipend, but what I’m owed has accumulated to N150,000. The N-Power office here told me that they were working on it when I called them to complain about our stipends. There are many people in the same situation.”

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Another N-Power beneficiary, who simply wanted to be referred to as Olawunmi, told FIJ that she had not received the stipends for the last five months of her N-Power employment.

“I’m an N-Power beneficiary, but since the inclusion of this programme, the so-called stipend has not been coming in as it should. This has been coupled with different issues alongside the irregular pattern of payments. So, as of today, N-Power is owing so many of us. They’re owing me a five-month stipend worth N150,000,” he said.

“I applied for the N Teach subsidiary of N-Power in September 2021, so I was posted to a government primary school where I served my one year tenure. We call it the place of primary assignment (PPA).

“For the present Batch C1 of N Teach, we stopped working at the end of our programme in August. Although when I called them (N-Power), they said there was a name mismatch, the mistake has been corrected by N-Power because the mistake was from their portal. Then, after the correction, I thought they were supposed to initiate my payment.

“Initially, I didn’t know it was a name mismatch issue. It was when I kept on disturbing them on their social media handles that I was told, because it is frustrating seeing people receiving alerts and you are excluded.

“My concern is that I doubt if they are still going to pay all outstanding stipends, because they should have done that before exiting us from the programme.”

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The N-Power programme was designed to benefit about 500,000 Nigerians between the ages of 18 and 35 at a time. Each batch works for a duration of 12 months. Olawunmi said that N-Power had already deployed Batch C2.

The beneficiaries told FIJ that they feared their stipends might have been embezzled.

“The five-month stipends N-Power owes me isn’t even showing on my dashboard,” Mattias told FIJ on Saturday.

“I hope they have not mismanaged the funds meant to pay our stipends in those last five months,” said Olawunmi.

On Saturday, the National Social Investment Program of Nigeria (NASIMS), the parent programme of N-Power, told FIJ that it would take some time for the stipends to be paid.

An agent at NASIMS’ contact centre explained that such delays were often the result of sudden changes in the details of N-Power beneficiaries on the dashboard.

“Sometimes, the beneficiaries change their names on the dashboard and it becomes difficult to release their stipends until we can verify the changes,” the NASIMS agent said.

“After a call to the contact centre, we forward the details of such beneficiaries to the technical team. It will take some time to effect the changes, and so the stipends may not be released automatically.

“The beneficiaries will get their stipends; they just need to exercise patience.”