₦airaland Forum

News reaching Arise News has it that protest is ongoing right now by the third set of beneficiaries of the highly successful Youth Enterprise With Innovation in Nigeria (YouWiN!) A job creation innovative programme that was a brain-child of Ngozi Okonjo-Iwealla under Goodluck Jonathan administration. The protest is on now at the main gate of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Abuja, Nigeria.

The highly successful scheme that has created thousands of jobs since its inauguration in 2011 has produced three sets of beneficiaries. The first two sets of beneficiaries of the scheme have received all their grants, while the 3rd set that were supposed to receive their grants in three instalments (called tranches) have received first tranche in January 2015. Most second tranches were paid in May, 2015 before the GEJ administration handed over to this present government.

Ever since it had been from one story to another. Most YouWiN awardees have been frustrated as the YouWiN Secretariat always give them vain hope of disbursements of the remaining part of the second tranche and the payments of 3rd tranche that was supposed to be the final tranche payment. This unbearable development has not only handicapped all YouWiN 3 awardees businesses but it has also held them ransom as the continual promises kept all the awardees from looking elsewhere for loan or support.

From our correspondent interaction with some awardees we gathered that The YouWiN! Secretariat was alleged to have blamed the undue delay in paying the awardees on change in policies resulting from change of government. Precisely the bulk of the blame was on the proposed speedy implementation of the TSA.

According to the source that spoke to Arise News correspondent, "between February and early March 2016 a few awardees that were yet to receive their 2nd tranche were slowly paid; still leaving some awardees that were yet to receive their 2nd tranche unpaid. And till now nobody have received anything as 3rd tranche." He lamented.

Also from the confirmed reliable information available to Arise News, the YouWiN programme was jointly sponsored by the the federal government of Nigeria, the World Bank, Julius Berger and some commercial banks in Nigeria.

Arise News also confirmed that before Goodluck Jonathan handed over, all the remaining funds needed to complete all the tranches (payments) was deposited in the different partner commercial banks awaiting approval by the Federal Ministry of Finance for disbursement to the awardees.

When the APC administration took over, rather than giving approval for disbursement to all YouWiN 3 awardees that have satisfactorily met their milestones and recommended for payments; an order was given that all the funds should be unconditionally pushed to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). And that marked the beginning of the ordeal of these young innovative YouWiN 3 awardees that have forced them to sack not fewer than 4,500 of their workers.

The 1,500 third batch beneficiaries of the YouWiN programme have been groaning under the yoke of none payments of their remaining tranches by the government and they said that they have exploited all possible means of dialogue only to keep receiving promises of "Soon" "A couple of weeks" "A few weeks" from the YouWiN Secretariat that always ended up with another promise of "Very soon". This has forced them to adopt the option of a peaceful protest to appeal to the government to fulfil their own part of the contract, since the last administration with the other YouWiN partners including World Bank have made the total funds available before handing over on 29th May, 2016.

An awardee who pleaded anonymous also confirmed to Arise News correspondents that the massive protest is also on going on twitter with the hashtag: ‪#‎SaveYouwin3Businesses‬

Lalasticlala pls help push to the front page.

The world must know that the suffering of the awardees.

There are over 200 nairaland members currently affected.

Seun pls.

Thanks

I thought that they called it a scam.


Jonathans legacy lives on

The awardees should have planned for the rainy day instead of hoping for eternal amnesty.

Most of their services are not commercially viable.

otokx:
The awardees should have planned for the rainy day instead of hoping for eternal amnesty.

Most of their services are not commercially viable.

I feel your pain.

That your bread selling business plan was rejected should not make you eternally bitter though