via Daily Times

The Minister of Youth Development, Alhaji Bolaji Abdullai has said that the Ministry had directed that from next year, the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) should post corps members to rural areas only with no provision for redeployment. 

The minister who disclosed this at the budget defence session with the House of Representatives committee on youth development said the corps members would only be posted to rural areas and they would be posted to concerns including agriculture, rural health, infrastructure and education. 

“Corpers would no longer be posted to banks and other organizations where they are always being rejected,” he said.

He told the committee that the ministry has proposed N3 billion for Youth Empowerment Programme (YEP) in 2012.

He said the Youth Empowerment Programme (YEP) was designed to train 250,000 Nigerian youths in the first year with the capacity to enlarge the figure to one million by the end of 2013. 

According to him, the programme would be executed with the collaboration of the private sector adding that the pilot programme would begin with the selection of 1000 youths from each state of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory for training in different vocations. 

He said the programme designed for Abuja would not necessarily be the ones that would be done in other states of the federation. He said the programme would be run without building a block as trainees would be taken to private organizations to be trained. 

But the Committee Chairman, Kamil Akinlabi (ACN, Oyo) counseled the minister to carry out critical studies before embarking on the YEP project as he cautioned that similar efforts in the past was hijacked by high-heeled politicians. 

The chairman urged the minister to collaborate with the ministries of education, agriculture and information communication technology (ICT) for effective performance.