The Minister of Youth Development, Ayodele Olawande, has said it is better to have an impactful one-year service where corps members are properly equipped with the capacity to create jobs and impact their lives rather than extend the service to two years.
He stated this while speaking with journalists on Monday in Abuja after the 2025 Annual Management Conference of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
The Minister of Education, Olatunji Alausa, had on Friday called for the extension of the mandatory National Youth Service Corps scheme from one to two years when the Director-General of NYSC, Brigadier General Olakunle Nafiu, paid him a courtesy visit in his office in Abuja.
“The minister also advocated for the extension of national service from one to two years, with the expansion of NYSC Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development Training programme content for corps members,” a statement posted on NYSC’s official Facebook page read in part.
However, the youth minister stressed the need to create a National Internship Scheme that would enable the corps members to properly equip themselves to get good jobs or become entrepreneurs after their service year, rather than just serving their fatherland without being productive.
He said what corps members knew about the word NYSC was to go and serve their fatherland, hence they just go and spend the one year without adding value to themselves and motivating others.
He said if they got training and certifications, which would be useful to them after the service year, “one would feel more fulfilled looking for the service year rather than all the march past taking place in camps. It’s time we changed things.”
Olawande said if things continued to happen same way, new results that would make impacts would not emerge.
“The only way we can make things better, even better than applause and praise, is to reform the NYSC. I’m not saying that things aren’t being done properly, no, I’m not saying that things are not going well,” he added.
On his part, the Director General, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brigadier General Olakunle, said the Annual Management Conference (AMC) served as a platform where the NYSC top management and other key officers critically reviewed the scheme’s activities from the past year and develop new strategies for enhanced performance in a new year.
He said the conference also helped to establish a new agenda for the scheme in its dedicated efforts to take centre stage in the pursuit of national development.
He said this year’s management conference themed “Transforming the NYSC Scheme to Meet the Yearnings of Contemporary Nigerian Graduates and Society” was borne out of the realisation that both the young graduates being administered during their one-year national service and Nigerian society had recently demanded a change in the way and manner it conducted its business.
