How fraud, favouritism mar YouWin programme

The Federal Government have decided to restructure the Youth Enterprise With Innovation In Nigeria programme, YouWin, due to the huge scale of fraud that have been discovered in the scheme.

Already, Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, had ordered that the programme, which was an initiative of the former President, Goodluck Jonathan-led administration be probed. YouWin was conceived to help youth entrepreneurs grow existing businesses and create employment.

A government source revealed that the results of the investigation were so worrisome that the minister had decided that the entire scheme be remodelled.

“The fraud uncovered in the programme made the minister to restructure the programme and turn its focus into enterprise education”, he said.

The source added that the investigators found out that the ministry under Jonathan awarded a “disproportionate” number of awards to people from a particular part of the country.

“Contrary to the rules of the game, awards were also given to some entrepreneurs that were operating outside Nigeria. In fact, some of these people simply took the cash and migrated to foreign countries.”

“Some of the members of the team used it to set up friends and family as awardees. In one case, a husband and his wife used the same address and pocketed N10m each. In another instance, a son of one of the directors in the ministry was given N10m”, he added.

Meanwhile, reports say the ministry explained that the ongoing probe would see investigators thoroughly combing through the information supplied by the 1,491 awardees.