Femi Mustapha
The Coalition of Ethnic Nationality Youth Leaders of Nigeria (CENYLON), has disclosed that the successful Establishment of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Trust Fund will help to alleviate the suffering of over 400,000 graduates mobilized for the services annually.
The Spokesman of the Group,
Barr. Faruk Mohammed Ofoku, stated this during a press conference held in Kaduna.
CENYLON commended Director-General of NYSC, Major-General Shuaibu Ibrahim, the Leadership and members of the House of Representatives for the successful Public Hearing on the Bill seeking to Establish the NYSC Trust Fund.
According to him, at its inception,
2,364 graduates were mobilized for the scheme saying, due to the proliferation of government and private owned Tertiary Institutions to meet the need of the population, the scheme now mobilized over 400,000 graduates annually. Which implies that more funds are required to achieve the objective the scheme.
He argued that even though NYSC was established under a tripartite arrangement, as spelt out in the NYSC Act Cap N84 Laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, dwindling resources accruable to the various tiers of Government, the funding of the NYSC has continued to reduce drastically to the level that major responsibilities of the States and Local Governments are shifted.
“The coalition notes that the Bill seeks to address the infrastructural deficit in the orientation camps and provide lodges for corp members in states and Local Government Areas, ensure adequate provision of other operational logistics, expand NYSC ventures to enhance revenue generation as well as address the problem of graduate unemployment in the country through training and empowerment of corp members.
“The successful passage of the bill and its implementation will play a significant role in curbing the menace of insecurity, as all ex corp members with business ideas will secure funding thereby keeping them busy and equally position them as employers of labour
“The bill is coming at a time Entrepreneurship studies have been made compulsory for all courses in our over 200 Tertiary Institutions of learning. While the students are trained to be self reliant, the Fund will help with business ideas of corps members to make them self reliant and employers of labour.
“Such beautiful initiative will stand challenge of time in our country’s history, considering the fact that entrepreneurship is one the new order of the 21st century, such fund will help breach the gap our generation faces, and we believe that; history will judge the current leadership of NYSC fairly in this subject matter. ‘ he said.
Barr. Ofoku further explained that all performance indicators has shown that the current DG NYSC is the best among all, his quest to make NYSC globally recognised is yielding positive results every seconds while we equally observed that as at today NYSC is the Human resources factory of our nation ideals Hub, today our nation is competing in the global market where innovative ideas is price.
” We therefore wish to call on the House Committee for Youth Development to tidy up their report for final passage of the house and concurrence by the Senate.
“The Coalition believe that President Muhammadu Buhari who has shown unprecedented support for youth development via provision of various low interest rate facilities to budding businesses will gladly sign the passed bill into law.”