The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouq has said that 390,000 applicants for the CBN Nexit empowerment programme out of the 500,000 enrollees have been prequalified to receive different skills on entrepreneurship from next month.
She disclosed on Wednesdat when she discussed the social development and humanitarian challenges facing Nigeria, and the government’s responses to the ongoing humanitarian and food crises in the country at the virtual Chatham House Africa Programme titled: “Responding to humanitarian and food crises in Nigeria”.
Farouq also hinted that the remaining 109,000 candidates are to be provided entrepreneurship programme at a later date.
According to her, all the 36 states of the federation including the FCT got federal government intervention in form of rice supplies to mitigate acute food shortage during the COVID -19 lockdown last year.
The Nexit empowerment programme is designed for exited N-power beneficiaries and will provide skills and funding to start up a business or support already existing business for the shortlisted candidates.
She stated that grains were also distributed to 28 states from the strategic national reserves.
The over 300,000 Nigerian refugees according to her displaced by insurgency and currently due to return from Cameroon, Niger and Chad are presently undergoing different processes and profiling by the Nigeria Immigration Service and Department of State Service (DSS) to ascertain their true status.
Chatham House noted that Nigeria was facing significant challenges due to the impacts of widening insecurity and a worsening humanitarian and food crisis that is currently affecting the northeast of the country.
It noted that the World Food Programme estimated that 3.4 million people were facing acute hunger in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states, and that another 4.3 million were entirely dependent on food assistance from the government or multilateral organisations.