The Director-General of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brigadier General Yushau Ahmed, has insisted that graduates who do not meet the one-year youth service scheme requirements would not be allowed to participate.
In a statement signed by the Director of Press and Public Relations, Eddy Megwa, he disclosed this yesterday in Abuja during the NYSC Management with some Corps Producing Institutions in Africa, with the theme; “Tackling the Emerging Challenges in Mobilization of Foreign-Trained Graduates for Effective National Service.”
He maintained that the youth service program aimed to remodel Nigerian youths for national unity and development by inculcating values such as discipline, honesty, integrity, accountability, hard work, entrepreneurship, and self-reliance.
He decried that higher institutions and school owners had decided to cut corners to make financial gain, which had led to the production of unqualified graduates when they should have focused on building world-class graduates in both character and learning, in accordance with the ideals of NYSC.
“It is expected that, from 2024 Batch ‘A’ service year, the collection of the master list of graduates would be extended to schools in Niger Republic, Cameroun, Ghana, and Uganda, which constitutes about 20% of graduates from the African continent.
“The exercise would be extended to cover countries identified with high vulnerability to faking of academic and travel documents,” he said.
Ahmed had mentioned that, as part of the measures to overcome the challenges in the mobilization of foreign-trained Nigerian graduates, all schools in Benin Republic, Togo, Cameroon, and Niger would henceforth be submitting a project-bound master list of their graduates to the NYSC every service year.
He noted that this practice had been available for schools in Nigeria for several decades and had proven very useful.
On her part, the Director of Corps Mobilization, Hajiya Walida Siddique Isa, in her introductory address, disclosed that the Scheme would continue to engage countries operating academic systems that manifest elements of deviance from the global best practices and the NYSC-established mobilization protocols.
