The Director General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brigadier General Olakunle Nafiu, has appealed for increased support to enhance Corps Members’ financial education, mentorship, technical skills, and access to grants, to enable them to fulfil their dreams of becoming entrepreneurs.
This appeal was contained in his keynote address at a meeting of the Scheme’s Stakeholders on Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED), held at the Nigerian Army Resource Centre, Abuja.
Represented by the Director of Planning, Research and Statistics, Dr. Ahmed Ikaka, the Director General stated that the need for greater support for Corps entrepreneurs has become imperative, given “the wide gap that exists between the large number of Corps Members trained in various vocational skills and the relatively few who become business owners.”
He explained that this disparity is largely due to limited access to start-up funds and the stringent conditions attached to securing them, which are often unfavourable to aspiring Corps entrepreneurs.
General Nafiu noted that the NYSC has successfully sensitized over three million Corps Members on entrepreneurship development and provided them with hands-on training in various vocational skills since the inception of SAED in 2012. A significant number of these individuals, he said, have gone on to establish their own businesses and become employers of labour.
He commended the NNPCL Foundation, Activate Success, and Wema Bank for facilitating the registration of over 30,000 Corps Members’ businesses at a 50% discount through the Corporate Affairs Commission, thereby promoting their formal integration into the nation’s business environment.
The Director General reassured stakeholders that any form of support they render to Corps entrepreneurs would be properly accounted for.
He added that the Scheme has upgraded the SAED platform on the NYSC Integrated System (NIS), providing Corps Members with a single-window access to capacity-building and entrepreneurship development tools.
“This digital integration facilitates skill selection and tracking via Corps Members’ dashboards and goes beyond traditional skill acquisition. We have also launched the Job Awareness Creation Programme, which features job readiness training, mock interviews, and CV reviews,” he said.
General Nafiu further disclosed that the Scheme is working to enhance the capacity of Corps Members to engage with potential employers, both locally and internationally through the Outsource to Nigeria Initiative (OTNI), facilitated by the Office of the Vice President of Nigeria (OVPN).
“We are also developing a budding partnership with the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy to integrate Corps Members into its Three Million Technical Talent (3MTT) project. These initiatives hold great promise for advancing youth inclusion and employment generation under Mr. President’s Renewed Hope Agenda,” he added.
Earlier, the Director of Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED), Mr. Kehinde Aremu-Cole, said the meeting, themed “Transforming Corps Members: Strengthening Partnership for Sustainable Skills Acquisition and Empowerment”, was aimed at celebrating the enduring partnerships that continue to drive the SAED initiative.
He urged all participants to contribute actively, share their experiences, offer constructive feedback, and propose innovative strategies to further enhance the SAED programme.