Last Thursday, about 3,000 members of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC 2017 Batch A, did their passing out ceremony on completing their one year compulsory service. Yet, many of them do not have the requisite platform to explore, make or create opportunities that Nigeria is in dire need of due to high unemployment rate both in the private and public sectors.
The scheme which was created by General Yakubu Gowon in 1973 in a bid to reconstruct, reconcile and rebuild the country after the Nigerian Civil War, comprises four main segments in which every corps member is expected to satisfactorily participate before he/she is qualified to be issued a certificate of National Service. The four segments of the service year are: Orientation Courses; Primary Assignment; Community Development Service; and Winding–Up/Passing–out.
However, going by the high rate of youth unemployment, especially among Nigerian graduates, some stakeholders in the educational sector have raised the question of whether the scheme should be scrapped and the yearly allocation used instead to create job opportunities for Nigerian teeming youths. This is as some alleged that rather than spend the N70 billion, ($194 million) yearly in catering for the over 3,000 corps members, most of whom will end up unemployed, the allocation instead, should be used to create funds for graduates in small and medium enterprises, SMEs. According to Labour Statistics Report of Nigeria, Q4 of 2017, about 7.9 million Nigerian youths aged 15-34 years, are currently unemployed. There is also the report by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, released on Monday, June 5, 2017, which revealed that 58.1 per cent of youths within this age bracket were underemployed.
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