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Over 403,528 job seekers have applied for the Federal Government’s job creation programme, N-Power, since it opened on Sunday.
The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, in an update statement on Monday, quoted the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Job Creation, Afolabi Imoukhede, as saying that all together, the website had received over 35 million hits since Saturday midnight.
His words:
“We’ve been very impressed by the enthusiastic response to the call for applications. As at noon on Monday June 13, only 36 hours after the launch of the portal, 403, 528 applicants had successfully registered on the site and were in the middle of completing the application process.
“We’re also very pleased that the registrations have been taking place without any hitches or system failures, considering the volume of response.
“The jobs scheme, known as ‘N-Power’, is one of the five initiatives of the Social Investment Programmes of the Federal Government of Nigeria, described by President Muhammdu Buhari in his Democracy Day Speech as ‘by far the most ambitious social protection programme in our history’. A total sum of N500 billion has been provided for the programme in the 2016 budget.
The N-Power programme, is divided into three segments namely: N-Power Teacher Corps, which aims to engage 500,000 young unemployed graduates as teachers; N-Power Knowledge that aims to engage 25,000 in the creative arts as well as technological development (hardware and software) and the N-Power Build, an accelerated training and certification (Skills to Job/Enterprise) programme that will engage and train 75,000 young unemployed Nigerians as technicians, artisans and service professionals.