NYSC urges individuals, private sector to support skills training for corpers

The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has called on public-spirited Nigerians and the private sector to support the corps in providing adequate skills training to corps members during their service year.
Salawu Abdulrazak, the NYSC FCT Coordinator, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Friday.
Abdulrazak said the scheme was facing the challenge of inadequate training materials for the corps members who showed interest in learning different skills such as tailoring, agro allied, make-up and so on.
He said that this challenge made it difficult for most corps members to receive one-on-one tutoring from the trainers, adding that the problem deprived them of acquiring more knowledge than they did.
“When we bring trainers to train maybe 300 corps members who are interested in learning sewing and he or she comes with only one training material, you know we are going to have problems.
“It is not enough to say government should provide support all the time; the private sector and well-meaning Nigerians too can come in and assist the scheme.
“It is not just only financial challenge that is facing the scheme but availability of materials for the training of these corps members.
“If we get more of this support, definitely you will see the difference. A lot of people have been paying lip service to this venture and these children are our future, if we fail to help them now, when are we going to do that.’’
He emphasised that the NYSC training programme was very important at this period when youths were graduating in their thousands every year from various higher institutions without jobs.
According to Abdulrazak, although the problem of unemployment is not peculiar to Nigeria alone, be that as it may, we cannot rely on governments’ unavailable white collar jobs.
He said that the scheme introduced the programme to enable corps members learn one or more skills as soon as they started their service year.
The coordinator said that Federal Government had opened new ways for corps members to access funds to start up businesses, adding that a corps member could get as much as N400,000 loan.