The Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs has indicted 14, 020 N-Power beneficiaries of being the cause of the delay in the payment of their stipends arising from irregularities they were found to have indulged in.

This was contained in a statement which was signed by Deputy Director (Information), Rhoda Ishaku Iliya.

In the statement, the ministry indicated that the Office of the Accountant–General of the Federation (OAGF) discovered that beneficiaries’ account details were already existing in other MDAs.

This she said caused the delay as the irregularity is against the established rule of the N-Power programme.

“For many months now, especially since the exit of the Batch B N-Power programme, beneficiaries have lamented non payment of their stipends for months by the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, saddled with the responsibility of facilitating the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) of the Federal Government,” Iliya said.

“The attention of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development has been drawn to the complaint of non-payment of some N-Power beneficiaries during the last exercise, with some alleging non-payment for upward of four months.

“For the records, the Ministry wishes to state that it had always processed, approved and remit necessary information for payments to the Office of the Accountant–General of the Federation (OAGF), whose responsibility it is to credit the various accounts of the beneficiaries using the GIFMIS platform as directed by FGN.

“However, after receiving complaints of non-payment by some beneficiaries, who did same through the ministry, the OAGF (GIFMIS) officially wrote informing the ministry that out of a total of Five Hundred and Sixteen Thousand, Six Hundred (516,600) N-Power beneficiaries data sent to OAGF for migration in April, 2020, only a total of Five Hundred and Two Thousand, Five Hundred and Eighty (502,580) data have successfully migrated to the GIFMIS platform.

“A total of Fourteen Thousand and Twenty (14,020) beneficiaries were returned because the beneficiaries’ account details already existed in other MDAs, which is against the established rule of the N-Power programme. This is verifiable.

“The Honourable Minister, Sadiya Umar Farouq, regrets any inconvenience this might have caused genuine and eligible beneficiaries just as the OAGF saddled with the responsibility of filtering out those denied is working assiduously to remedy the situation.”