N-power: NEXIT Portal shuts down, heightens tension

The application portal for the NEXIT Programme, a collaborative effort of the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development and the Central Bank of Nigeria to transit the exited Batch A and B N-power Beneficiaries into Federal Government Intervention Schemes, has shutdown.

Before the recent development, the NEXIT portal https://nexit-fmhds.cbn.gov.ng  has been accepting application from thousands of the exited N-power Beneficiaries who have been declaring their interest in the NEXIT Programme.

The Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development who had earlier announced that the portal would close in "few days", as at the time of this publication, has made no official statement on why the portal has shutdown.

Related: Breaking: NEXIT Registration ends soon, FG issues instructions to N-power Beneficiaries

However, Microsoft in explanation on why Azure Websites could develop the 403 error through the blog https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=2095007, stated that there are 3 reasons why such could occur.

“Error 403 - This web app is stopped.”, when browsing to an Azure website.

"There are 3 conditions that can cause this error to be presented.

1.The site has reached a billing limit and your site has been disabled.

2. The Website has been stopped in the portal.

3. The Azure Website has reached a resource quota limit that applies to either Free or Shared scale modes.

The 500,000 exited Batch A and B N-power Beneficiaries who have been on a protest over the continued delay of the N-EXIT Programme implementation after several months of its launch, have been left in more doubts on wether the programme could ever be implemented to fulfil its design.

According to the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar Farouk, the design of the NEXIT Plan is such that:

i) 200,000 beneficiaries will be engaged as financial services operators under the Shared Agent Network Expansion Facility (SANEF)

ii) 30,000 to be engaged beneficiaries as geospatial experts and enumerators in the Economic Sustainability Plan’s Mass Agric programme

iii) others would have the option of benefiting from the Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) micro-enterprise loans.

However, after more than 5 months of the announcement and over 9 months of their disengagement from the N-power Programme, the 500,000 exited N-power Beneficiaries have had nothing to fall back on.