Date: 2016-12-07

The Presidency has said that states governments have to take control of the deployment of the 200,000 applicants employed through the Federal Government's N-Power scheme.

The Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari for Social Protection Plan, Mrs. Maryam Uwais stated this in a telephone interview with our correspondent yesterday.

Mrs Uwais was reacting to complaints by many of the selected applicants that they were still being subjected to aptitude tests.

She said since many of them would work as teachers in schools belonging to the states, the Federal Government could not stop the states from conducting the aptitude test.

The presidential aide explained that the aptitude test was part of the verification the states had to do before deploying the applicants to their places of primary assignments.

She said: "The states have to take ownership. We can't stop the states from conducting aptitude test. They (states) need to verify, in the verification proper, and if they want to do a test, they want to authenticate that they (applicants) actually own these certificates and that they actually live in the vicinity where they say they live.

"Because the money we are paying them is not enough for accommodation and is not enough for transportation, it is for the states to deploy them to where they are going to work. We can't take control of that."