Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The Director General National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brig-General Shauibu Ibrahim, has revealed that no fewer than 4,644,804 Nigerians have participated from the one year mandatory national service scheme from its inception since 1973.
Speaking during the maiden edition of the NYSC Media Parley with editors and correspondents of various media outfits in Abuja, the NYSC boss equally disclosed that a total of 1,132,409 corps members have benefitted from the over N555 million empowerment loan scheme programme.
“Since inception, 4.644,804 Nigerians have participated in the scheme. This number involve those that actually participated in the scheme excluding those issued certificate of exemption,” he said.
On the recent innovations in the scheme, he said: “In response to prevailing socio-economic realities, the scheme in recent years made the following giant strides to further consolidate its achievements.
“The Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) department was established in 2012 with the mandate to drive the scheme’s collaboration with various stakeholders towards addressing the problem of graduate youth unemployment” he revealed.