From Juliana Taiwo-Obalonye, Abuja
The Presidency has, for the umpteenth time, clarified that no scheme under the Federal Government’s Social Investment Programmes (SIP) attracts an application fee.
It has, therefore, threatened to prosecute anyone found to be selling the forms under the SIP.
In a statement by the Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, Nigerians are urged to pay money for SIP.
“We have been receiving reports about instances where Nigerians are being asked to pay application fees for SIP forms. We want to make it clear that such action is illegal and could warrant criminal prosecution.
”Let us make this very clear; in order to benefit from N-Power, you don’t have to pay any application fees, at all. The way to apply is to go online to the N-Power portal. But it is not open right now as we are still working on the 200,000 unemployed graduates already engaged,” Akande said.
On the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT), the media aide to the Vice President, again, stressed there were no application forms or fees to be paid, either.
“We are using a Community-Based Targeting template of the World Bank and, as we have explained, this is the mode of identifying the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable,” he said.
Akande said there were instances, during the N-Power online application process, when some leaders uploaded information of their people onto the N-Power Internet portal to meet the online application requirement.
“We don’t frown at such an effort as long as the information of the N-Power applicants is properly in-putted online. But we frown at anyone selling forms to Nigerians for this programmes,” he said.
On claims that some party agents were involved in such illegal form sales, Akande said “the rule affects everyone. No one should sell forms for N-Power or any of the President’s Social Investment Programmes. That is exploitation and it is fraudulent.”
Akande said while the CCT payments had started in the pilot states but not everyone in those states had been paid due to logistics and banking challenges.