The Director-General (DG) of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brigadier General Olakunle Nafiu, has reaffirmed the Scheme’s pivotal role in tackling youth unemployment in Nigeria.
He made this assertion while briefing Group 2 members of the Senior Executive Course 48, 2026, of National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru-Jos, who were are at NYSC Directorate Headquarters on a study tour with the theme: “Economic Diversification and National Development: Leveraging the Orange Economy and Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Growth in Nigeria”.
The NYSC helmsman told the course participants that the Scheme had trained a total of 1,391,119 young graduates in different vocational skills between 2019 and 2025 under its Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) programme.
Nafiu revealed that the SAED was introduced in 2012 in line with one of the objectives of the Scheme, which is “to enable Nigerian youths acquire the spirit of self-reliance by encouraging them to develop skills for self employment”.
He hailed the founding fathers of the Scheme for their foresight in designing the objective, which mandates the Scheme to empower Corps members with vocational and entrepreneurial skills, noting that they have turned out to be much needed in today’s Nigeria, where white-collar jobs are scarce.
“As at the time NYSC was established, jobs were readily available and companies were running after graduates that were turned out by the few tertiary institutions that existed then. Today, however, those opportunities are very scarce. Thankfully, the NYSC Act has given us the mandate to empower Corps members with entrepreneurial skills that will make then not just self-sufficient, but also employers of labour,” he said.
Nafiu commended government agencies and other organizations that partner with the NYSC in the implementation of the SAED programme through technical and funding support, especially by providing soft loans, grants and start-up kits for Corps entrepreneurs.
