NYSC’s drive to produce graduate entreprenuers

As the higher institutions of learning churn out graduates yearly, the rate of youth unemployment continues to increase. ENE OSANG writes on the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC)’s commitment to ensuring gainful employment for youths after the one year compulsory service to the nation.

The Director General of the NYSC, Brigadier General Sulaiman Zakari Kazaure, during a media chat in Abuja noted the focus of his administration to include breaking new grounds, motivation of staff and corp members through improved welfare and expanding the Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SEAD).
According to the DG, the SEAD department, established in 2012 is aimed at eradicating unemployment amongst graduate youths across the country.
Kazaure while noting that SEAD equips corp members with specific vocational skills based on individual interest, added that it develops the business and entrepreneurial capacities in the participants.
“Presently, corps members are being trained in skill areas such as agro-allied, food preservation and processing, culture and tourism, cosmetology, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), environment, beautification, construction, education, power and energy, film and photography, as well as automobile technology.”
He disclosed that with the collaboration of many organisations at both national and international levels which has provided materia, technical and financial support for the programme, over 600,000 corp members have been trained with about 5,000 of them who have established their own business within the last four years.
He said further that corp members have also been given opportunities after their training period to seek for loan with the Bank of Industry (BOI) to enable them set up their own business.
“In furtherance to our partnership drive, the Bank of Industry, through the BOI-NYSC graduate empowerment fund is providing corps entrepreneurs with training and soft loans to establish their own business.
“Also, the NYSC/CBN Youth Entrepreneurship Development Programme (YEDP) is empowering corps entrepreneurs with business loans,” he said.
“Since I came on board, we have extended the frontiers of SEAD by signing an MOU with the Access Bank plc for the construction of a huge skill training centre in Gombe that is expected to serve corps members in the north-easter states.
“We are currently in discussion with Hall 7 developers, the Chinese embassy and a chinese businessman for similar establishment in other parts of Nigeria,” he added.
On the ‘ventures initiative’ of the NYSC, the DG explained that it was established primarily to provide the corps members training grounds in skill acqui@sition and entrepreneurship, as well as meet some basic needs of the scheme as it provides them with kits.

“The NYSC ventures include garment factories located in Niger and Anambra states, Rice Mill in Ebonyi state, Feed Mill in Lagos, Garri processing in Kwara state, water bottling and bakery in the FCT amongst others.
“We are currently in collaboration with the federal ministry of agriculture for technical support in the establishment of more farm settlements across the six geo-political zones for which the ministry has donated agro-processing equipments.”
He stated further that six farm houses will be buillt in selected states to accomodate corp members during trainings as agricultural extension workers in the rural communities.
According to him, all these follows the NYSC quest to compliment government’s efforts at providing succour to the victims of insurgency in the north-east, adding that bags of rice and garri produced from the NYSC rice mill Ezilo, Ebonyi state and the garri factory in Afon, Kwara state have been donated to the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP’s) camp in Yola, Adamawa state recently.
To this end, the DG called on state and local government areas in the sustenance of the NYSC because it has presented the biggest of the challenges faced by the  scheme.
“It is pertinent to state that the NYSC act has clearly stated the responsibilities of all the three tiers of government the operations of the scheme.

“In as much as the federal government takes the lion share of provision of orientation camp facilities, post-camp accommodation and transport of corps members, logistics support for inspection of corps locations, material support for community development service and security of corps members are the responsibilities of the state and local governments,” the DG emphasized.
It would be recalled that the DG harped on the responsibilities of the state and local governments towards serving corp members following their neglect of roles.
He therefore maintained that the neglect of responsibilities by states and local governments for the federal government to handle is the reason behind limited capacity and quality of facilities in most orientation camps across the country.
To this end, he appealed to the state and local governments who have not been discharging their statutory responsibilities to reconsider their stance and support the scheme in the effective mentoring of the future leaders of Nigeria.