The Presidency on Monday said 403,528 persons had so far successfully applied for jobs on the Federal Government’s newly-launched job portal since it opened for applicants on Sunday.

The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice-President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, disclosed this in a statement made available to journalists on Monday.


 
Akande quoted the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Job Creation, Mr. Afolabi Imoukhede, as saying the government was impressed with the response.

“We have been very impressed by the enthusiastic response to the call for applications. As of noon on Monday, June 13, only 36 hours after the launch of the portal, 403,528 applicants had successfully registered on the site and were in the middle of completing the application process.

“We are also very pleased that the registrations have been taking place without any hitches or system failures, considering the volume of response,” he quoted Imoukhede as saying.

According to the statement, the website had so far recorded over 35 million hits since Saturday midnight.

The Jobs Scheme, known as ‘N-Power’, is one of the five initiatives of the Social Investment Programmes of the Federal Government.

A sum of N500bn has been provided for the programme in the 2016 budget.

N-Power is designed to help young Nigerians acquire and develop life-long skills to become solution providers in their communities and to become players in the domestic and global markets.

It will provide employment opportunities for 500,000 graduates as teachers, agriculture extension advisers, healthcare assistants and civic and adult education instructors in communities across Nigeria.

There will also be a pool of 100,000 software developers, hardware service professionals, animators, graphic artists, building services professionals, artisans and others.

Applications for the Scheme commenced on Sunday on the portal: www.npower.gov.ng.