Al-Makura Uses Security Vote To Empower 1400 Youths

Governor Umaru Al-Makura of Nasarawa on Sunday said that his administration was using security vote to pay over 1,400 youths engaged by the state government under the Nasarawa Youth Empowerment Scheme.

Nasarawa State Governor, Alhaji Tanko Al-Makura

The Governor disclosed this in Lafia while speaking to journalists shortly after inspecting some abandoned road projects initiated by the previous administration in Adudu, Keana and Agyaragu.

Al-Makura said that the gesture became necessary following the zero allocation to the scheme in the 2014 budget proposal approved by the PDP controlled Nasarawa State House of Assembly.

“I have decided to pay the money for NAYES from my own security vote and I have already converted them to my own Special Assistance, SA, let them do the work.

“It is not about nomenclature, but about service and about engaging them so that they don’t become liabilities on the streets.”

Al-Makura said that he would use the idea to deliver the dividends of democracy to people of the state who were not within “the statutory and bureaucratic enclave of the government.”

“Let me extend and expand the scope of that distribution of the dividend of democracy. I am going to do that for the youths, disabled, market women and the aged.

“Each of this category of people will get N20,000 monthly support called “seed money,” Al-Makura said.

Al-Makura assured the people of Nasarawa of conventional employment opportunities whenever the state revenue improved.

He said that the delay in offering conventional employment opportunities was due largely to the dwindling monthly revenue allocation of less than N3 billion to the state from the federation account.

He said that over N2.7 billion of the monthly allocation was going to civil servants as salaries and emoluments of political appointees.

NAN