From: Ruth David, Bauchi
The Director General, National Youth Service Corps, Brigadier General Suleiman Zakari Kazaure has disclosed that his management has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Central Bank of Nigeria [CBN] and the Bank of Industry [BOI] to provide loans to serving corps members across the country who underwent skills acquisition and entrepreneurial trainings at orientation camps to set up small scale businesses after the service year.
Suleiman Zakari Kazaure said this Tuesday when he visited the 2, 384 batch B, Stream two corps members undergoing orientation at Wailo camp in Bauchi state saying that the gesture was part of measures by the NYSC to surmount the problem of unemployment faced by teeming graduates in the nation.
He admitted that government could not provide jobs to all youths being produced by universities and polytechnics yearly and opined that corps members should pay serious attention to the skills acquisition trainings taking place at camps to enable them start their own trades to earn a living and be self-reliant after the national service.
The DG said,” we are trying to establish six skills acquisition centres in the six geo-political zones of the country where we will be training our corps members from all sides. Already we are into collaboration with CBN and Bank of Industry and they agreed to give loans to our corps members. So start up funds is not a problem to us”.
He called on corps members deployed to the state to respect the culture of the locals and to always move in groups for security purposes.
The DG also challenged them to initiate or facilitate community development projects in their host communities which are some of the cardinal objectives of the scheme.
In his speech, the state coordinator of NYSC ,Mr Afolayan Adeola James called on the people in the state to be helpful and hospitable to the youths so that they would feel at home through out the compulsory one year service and contribute their quota in the nation .
