The Federal government threatens prosecution of individuals found collecting fees from Npower applicants/beneficiaries.

The Presidency also warned politicians against racketeering in any of the social investment programmes(npower) of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. The npower nigeria scheme is currently ongoing.

The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, in a statement Sunday night was reacting to claims that some party agents were involved in illegal sales of forms to applicants of the N-Power programme.

The spokesman of the vice president described the act as illegal, warning that it could warrant criminal prosecution.

Akande warned: “the rule affects everyone. No one should sell forms for N-Power or any of the president’s Social Investment Programmes (SIP). That is exploitation and it is fraudulent.”

Noting that none of the social investment programmes attracts an application fee, he asked Nigerians to refuse paying anyone money.

Akande stated: “We’ve been receiving reports about instances where Nigerians are being asked to pay application fees for SIP forms. We want to make it clear that such action is illegal and could warrant criminal prosecution.

“Let us make this very clear. In order to benefit from N-Power, you don’t have to pay any application fees at all. The way to apply is to go online to the N-Power portal. But it is not open right now as we are still working on the 200,000 unemployed graduates already engaged.”

He said there were also no application forms or fees for the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) of the Social Investment Programmes, explaining that “We are using a community-based targeting template of the World Bank and as we’ve explained, this is the mode of identifying the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable.”

Over 200,000 jobless Nigerians have started benefitting from the N-power program, which is in its first phase. Beneficiaries of the programme are to receive N30,000 monthly to work in the Agricultural sector or teach in schools.