National Assembly to probe Osinbajo for politicization of N-power, others

The House of Representatives has mandated two of its committees on Poverty Alleviation and Finance to probe the office of the Vice-President manned by the current Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, for alleged politicization of the social intervention schemes of the Federal government.

The resolution followed the adoption of a motion moved by Rep member, Mark Gbillah, who decried the lack of involvements of all the critical stakeholders in the execution of the scheme.

While moving the motion, Hon Gbillah said that there was need to protect the interests of all Nigerian citizens regardless of party affiliation and to ensure equitable participation of all Nigerians in the social intervention schemes of the federal government.

According to him, “the federal government has completely ceded the identification and selection process for these programs to the states to be superintended by coordinators appointed by state governments without the oversight or involvement of the federal institutions who conceptualized and approved the appropriation of funds for the schemes except for the approval of payment”.

To this end, he said the ceding of these responsibilities solely to the states had allegedly resulted in the nomination of beneficiaries who were genuinely in need of this intervention.

The scheme, he said, included the N-power programme, the conditional cash transfer for eligible Nigerians, and the home grown school feeding program where local vendors would be selected to prepare required meals for about 5.5 million primary 1 to primary 3 school pupils in all the states.

The motion scaled through when it was put to vote by the Speaker, Hon Yakubu Dogara.