90% N-Power beneficiaries get BVN clearance –Presidency

…Physical verification’ll commence before deployment

The Office of the Vice President yesterday said over 90 per cent of the 200,000 unemployed Nigerian graduates selected in the first batch of the N-Power Volunteer Corps, NPVC, have been verified using the Bank Verification Number. It therefore noted that any untrue information submitted in the process of application was a ground for disqualification.
Senior Special Assistant on Media & Publicity in the Office of the Vice President, Mr. Laolu Akande, who made the clarification while giving an update on the N-Power Volunteer Corps now advancing with assignment of beneficiaries to their places of deployments in states of residence, noted that “it is most gladdening that those who were selected are now telling the stories of how they have not been employed for years, but now grateful to the President for this initiative.”
Some of them, he added, expressed satisfaction, according to a BBC report that though they knew no one in government yet, they got selected for the paid volunteer job programme, attesting to the transparency of the selection process.
Akande stated that all the states and the FCT through the focal persons they appointed have since received the list of the 200,000, and now working on deploying the beneficiaries to their places of assignment.
He also explained that by using the BVN which is one of the most viable means of identification in the country today, there is hardly any way anything fraudulent can sail through in the process.
“We are confident that the selection process, all the way through with BVN, and physical verification at the points of deployment in the states and the local government areas, are both transparent and impossible to abhor ghost beneficiaries, or any kind of fraud,” he asserted.
Akande also disclosed that 93 per cent of those selected have been screened through the BVN, with the assistance of the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS), and only authentic and verifiable beneficiaries will be paid the N30,000 monthly stipends starting December.
Responding to some allusions made in sections of the media about random searches conducted on social media platforms, the SSA argued that such cannot be better than “biometric identification we have secured through the BVN.”
In any case he continued, “besides the BVN, there is going to be physical verification, through an in-built component in our selection system that requires that information submitted online during the application would have to be authenticated at the point of deployment across the country, including verification of academic credentials and residence status.”
According to him, just as it is normal when someone gets a job or even admission to school, he or she would proceed to present papers that have been submitted during application for verification. “This is also going to be like that, so claims about some applicants claiming to be residents of states would be dealt with if it turns out such claims are false. If an applicant cannot supply proof of residence, the selection is terminated.”