The Special Public Work Programme being supervised by Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, has been allocated through slots to politicians and some groups.
Keyamo had engaged in a brawl with federal lawmakers over the allocation of slots to politicians in the country.
However, with the commencement of the selection process in the 774 local government areas in the country, slots have been allocated to politicians, youth groups, National Union of Road Transport Workers as well as the Christian Association of Nigeria.
Political office holders have been allocated 15 per cent of the slots in the programme designed to employ 1,000 artisan youth from each of the 774 local government councils in the country, a report by The Nation revealed.
Giving a breakdown of the slots sharing, Chairman of the Extended Special Public Work Selection Committee in Rivers State, Dr Innocent Barikor, said, “The programme has a guideline.
“The directive given to us is that every state governor has 40 slots of the job in each LGA; serving Senators have 30 each, members of the House of Representative have 25 slots; a minister has 30 slots in every LGA in his state of origin, so I have nothing to do about it.
“This job is for those that do not know about ICT. They are jobs for bricklayers, market women, hairdressers, among others.”
Kaduna State Chairman of the Selection Committee, Hajiya Hafsat Baba, said, “Thirteen per cent of the total number allocated to Kaduna is being shared among the elected and appointed political office holders from the state, while the eighty-seven per cent will be given to the people through a random selection committee.”
The National Union of Road Transport Workers got 10 each across the 25 council areas; market women got 250 slots, 10 for each council area; youth organisations reportedly got 20 slots for each of the council areas, bringing their total to 500.
State chapters of CAN and the Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs were reportedly given “500 job slots each, 20 per LGA”.
Confirming the slots allocation, Keyamo said the slots were for constituents each politician was representing.
He said, “Yes, the figures are true. Fifteen per cent has been reserved for political officeholders. They also have constituents they represent.
“The slots for senators and House of Representatives members are for the local governments within the constituents/catchment areas that they represent, not the whole state.
“It is a very, very small number if you consider that the slots are not up to 150 out of 1,000 per local government. So, you still have 850 per local government. You still have a large number reserved for Nigerians.”
