Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has stated that President Muhammadu Buhari’s government will expand Social Investment Programmes including TraderMoni, N-Power and Home Grown School Feeding Programme.
Speaking at the 11th Bola Tinubu Colloquium themed: ‘Work For People’ at the International Conference Centre, Abuja on Thursday, he assured Nigerians of better times.
Prof. Osinbajo explained that at the Next Level many Nigerians will benefit from the programmes introduced by the federal government.
“We are talking again about our Social Investment Programmes (SIPs). At the Next Level, we will, of course, expand our Social Investment Programme; at the moment, the programme is the biggest of its kind anywhere in the African continent.
“In our school feeding programme, we are feeding every day, 9.2 million children in public schools across 26 states.
“That programme is important not just from the point of view of providing nutrition for many of the young people in public schools, many of whom come from very poor parents and may not be assured of a decent meal a day.
“It is a very important programme for us also because of the multiplier-effect on agriculture and also in the distribution of the products and also those we employ as cooks.
“The same is true of our TraderMoni programme, a component of our Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP), where we are giving money to the bottom of the trading pyramid in Nigeria.
“It is a programme of the Bank of Industry where we give loans of N10, 000 to petty traders through their mobile phones and they get N15,000 when they pay back, then N20,000 and more up to N100,000.
“The same is true of our MarketMoni which we give to traders in cooperatives. So far, we have over a million TraderMoni beneficiaries and about 500,000 MarketMoni beneficiaries and we intend to expand the scope of that.
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“We also intend to expand the scope of our N-Power programme which is our job scheme for young people. Young graduates coming out of school and some non-graduates.
“At the moment, we are engaging 500,000 of these young people and we pay them every month. Most of them have devices/tablets that contain training materials in enhancing their viability skills and also helps them to provide services to people who require them.
“We intend to expand the programme; we must expand the programme because 1.7million people come out of school and are looking for jobs every single year, we are able to bridge that gap by engaging 500,000 of them as soon as they come out of school.
“So, the Next Level promises to be exciting, though a bit challenging as possibly as where we are coming from. But as the President has said repeatedly, we have no other focus but the progress of this country. And we will ensure that step-by-step, we get to where it is that we promised to take the country.
“I want to say to you all that the Next Level is for all of us and I urge that all of us cooperate to take us to this Next Level,” he said in his speech.
So, on behalf of the President, Muhammadu Buhari whom I represent here today, I want to wish Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, happy birthday and to thank you all for making out time to come to this event.
