National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) has said there are no plans to mobilize prospective corps members, due to the current fight against coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria.
The Director-General of the scheme, Ibrahim Shuaibu, who made this known in an interview with Economic Confidential, said only Batch A, Stream 1 would be asked to complete orientation.
On March 18, Corp members of this batch were hurriedly dismissed during their orientation service as a result of coronavirus fears.
Shuaibu stated that the management will only organise fresh orientation exercise when there is authorising from relevant authorities
He noted that;
We don’t know when we are going to start mobilising our corps members. You know our training is also structured like that of the military and paramilitary. You can see that the Nigerian Navy recently suspended its training for its freshly recruited cadets.
So, the moment the coast is clear, we are going to key into the way others will conduct their exercise, so that our corps members can be called back soonest.
In addition, the Director-General of NYSC expressed delight over the success story of the Scheme’s Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) programme.
He said plans are on the way to generate revenue from the creativity and productivity of corps members under SAED.
Shuaibu stressed;
The SAED programme has recorded tremendous successes, which can even be seen from the activities of our corps members in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Our corps members, nationwide, produced face masks, sanitizers, disinfectant tools, and automatic sanitizing machines. They are also involved in the sensitization and distribution of palliatives of some of these items to communities.
He disclosed that the scheme intends to commercialise in order to reduce its dependency on the Federal Government by internally generating revenue.
