Mr Solomon Dalong, Minister of Youths, Sports and Social Development, said on Tuesday, that the Federal Government would sustain the National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) scheme no matter what.
“I will stand for the sustenance of the scheme and that it should continue to grow,” Dalong said when he paid an official visit to the NYSC Orientation Camp at Iyana-Ipaja, in Lagos State.
“What we need to do now is introduce skills acquisition, empowerment; we need to now repackage the scheme.
“At the level of the Federal Government, we are thinking of after the mandatory one year service, those who want to learn a trade, skills acquisition and entrepreneurship can be retained and be given more training.
“Our graduates are enlightening minds, whatever you teach them, they will survive with it.
“So a grant will be given to them at the end to start off and train other people,” he said.
The minister charged the NYSC to install a high tension illuminating light at the camp to ensure adequate security.
“You should have high tension Illumination at the camp, as soon as possible.
“If you have over 2,000 Nigerians in a place like this, you should have a perfect illumination due to the present security challenges in the country.
“I am impressed with what I have seen on ground at the camp; the facilities are good, I am satisfied,” he said.
Dalong also charged the NYSC to renovate all existing orientation camps in the country.
“So as you embark on renovation, put it in mind that more people will be using the facilities,” he said.
“I am saying this because I do not know when we will get a new orientation camp, but we are sure that we will have more students passing out of the tertiary institutions.
“When we started this scheme, we never planned for what we have now.
“Nigeria did not plan to have the number of graduate we have today, so the whole concept of NYSC would have started with permanent structures.
“The visionaries of the scheme did not anticipate that the scheme would live this long, after the civil war,” the Minister said.
Good