By Emmanuel Yatai

The All Progressives Congress (APC) on Wednesday empowered 870 youths in Plateau with cash and other items.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the move was under the Renew Hope Scale-Up Grant, an initiative of Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda, the National Chairman of the party.

Mr Ezekiel Gomos, the Project Manager, said that the beneficiaries received cash grants, tricycles, sewing machines, welding and fabricating tools.

Other items, he said included grinding machines, auto mechanic tool box, carpentry tool box, phone repair tool box, among others.

Gomos said that 48,000 youths applied online, demonstrating the hunger, energy and entrepreneurial spirit across the state.

“Due to the large number of applicants, the selection process was rigorous, systematic and evidence-based.

“Each applicant was required to submit a business plan, which served as the foundation for review process.

“We painstakingly and meticulously examined all the 48,000 submissions to know the viability of the enterprise, realistic used of the grant, potential growth and capacity to create employment,” he said.

Gomos explained that 1,400 young entrepreneurs in the state were equally benefitted from cash grants worth N280 million.

The project manager, who congratulated all the beneficiaries, urged them to make best use of the opportunity.

“This grant represent both an opportunity and a responsibility; it’s not free money to spend, but seed capital to invest wisely.

“You must therefore use it wisely, keep proper records, strengthen your business system, improve your products and services and demonstrate that support, when properly targeted can produce real results,” he said.

Speaking, Yilwatda, the APC Chairman, congratulated the beneficiaries and reiterated his commitments to continually support the youths to be self employed.

“Today I am here to entrust some people; you may not be the most qualify, but it’s a privilege you have been selected.

“Do not take this as a right, but as a privilege; use the privilege to build yourself so that in years to come, we will see the outcome of what you have done,” he advised (NAN)(www.nannews.com)

EDY/AZA

=========

Edited by Polycarp Auta

Amazon and Meta are among the big companies set to lobby India’s payments body over the dominance of Walmart-owned PhonePe and Google Pay in the country’s fast-growing instant payments network.

Executives representing platforms including Amazon Pay, WhatsApp, CRED, MobiKwik, and Flipkart’s Super.money are scheduled to meet the National Payments Corporation of India on Thursday, TechCrunch has learned. The body operates the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), India’s instant payments system that processes billions of transactions each month.

The meeting comes over a year after India deferred plans to cap the market share of UPI apps at 30% until December 31, 2026, a measure that would have limited any single app’s share of UPI transactions. That delay has effectively allowed PhonePe and Google Pay to retain their dominant positions, intensifying concerns among players with smaller shares about their ability to compete.

PhonePe and Google Pay combined accounted for roughly 80% of the 22.6 billion transactions on the UPI network in March, data from NPCI shows. That scale far outpaces rivals such as Paytm, Flipkart’s Super.money, CRED, Amazon Pay, and MobiKwik.

PhonePe said this week it has crossed 700 million registered users and 50 million merchants across India, underlining the scale that has helped entrench its position. The merchants that accept it spans more than 98% of the country’s postal codes, highlighting the reach that smaller rivals say is difficult to replicate.

An agenda reviewed by TechCrunch shows participants, including Amazon and Meta, are expected to raise concerns about user acquisition practices, product design, and monetization within the UPI ecosystem. Among the proposals are restrictions on how dominant apps onboard users and use contact data, calls for fair access to features such as autopay and payment mandates, and requests for incentives and regulatory support to help emerging players compete.

Because these companies find it harder to compete with the dominant instant pay players, they are lobbying the regulatory body to help them. However, the NPCI, which operates under the Reserve Bank of India’s supervision, has struggled to find ways to curb dominance without disrupting services used by hundreds of millions of users.

NPCI, Amazon, Meta, and others did not respond to requests for comment.

It remains unclear whether the meeting will lead to any immediate changes, with questions persisting over how NPCI could address market concentration.