The Senior Special Assistant to the Vice President on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande, has warned politicians against racketeering in any of the social investment programmes (SIP) of the administration of Nigeria’s President and Grand Commander of the Federal Republic, Muhammadu Buhari.

According to Ceoafrica, the aide gave the warning in a statement yesterday while reacting to claims that some party agents were involved in illegal sales of forms to applicants of the N-Power programme, which he described as illegal hinting that, it could warrant criminal prosecution.

He stressed that none of the social investment programmes attracts an application fee, and added that Nigerians should not pay anyone money.

He further said that "the rule affects everyone, no one should sell forms for N-Power or any of the president's Social Investment Programmes (SIP), and that the act on anybody found wanting would be termed “exploitation and fraudulence".

Akande stated: "we've been receiving reports about instances where Nigerians are being asked to pay application fees for SIP forms. We want to make it clear that such action is illegal and could warrant criminal prosecution.

"Let us make this very clear. In order to benefit from N-Power, you don't have to pay any application fees at all, the application for the N-Power portal is online, but it is not open right now as we are still working on the 200,000 unemployed graduates already engaged."

He said there were also no application forms or fees for the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) of the Social Investment Programmes, explaining that "we are using a community-based targeting template of the World Bank and as we've explained, this is the mode of identifying the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable".