The Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Youth Development, Rabi Shuaibu Jimeta has charged charitable individuals, corporate bodies and philanthropic organizations in the country to emulate the noble deeds of the National Youth Corps Foundation in assisting the NYSC achieve its mandate of promoting national unity and cultural integration in the country.
Rabi Jimeta made this charge on Thursday September 10, 2015 in her office in Abuja, while welcoming a six-man delegation of members of the Board of Trustees of the National Youth Service Corps Foundation on a courtesy visit. She also commended the foundation for the valuable support it has rendered over the years to the NYSC; more importantly for instituting a soft – loan scheme geared towards empowering ex-corps members to set up small – scale businesses, in order to reduce graduate unemployment among the country’s teeming youths.
The Permanent Secretary further emphasized that the financial burden involved in catering for the ever-increasing number of corps members being turned out yearly by both the public and private tertiary institutions is getting higher by the day, due to increase in the number of tertiary institutions producing graduates for the NYSC. She called for more assistance from well – meaning individuals and organizations towards promoting the good cause of the scheme.
Jimeta, who pledged the ministry’s support and encouragement to the foundation, commended its skill acquisition and economic empowerment initiative geared towards enhancing the self-employment capacity of corps members. She urged all Nigerian parents to regard themselves as stakeholders in the scheme.
Speaking earlier, the Chairman of the foundation, Abubakar Abdullahi (Dr) explained that the purpose of the visit was to re-establish contact with the ministry and appealed for support and partnership. He added that the foundation is poised to assist the Federal Government to sustain the noble NYSC scheme through improvement in the quality of lives of the vibrant category of young graduates as well as help them to stand on their own after the service.
Abubakar Abdullahi disclosed that the foundation will soon host a fund – raising dinner to generate funds for use as loans to deserving ex-corps members with good business plans, desirous of being self – employed and becoming future employers of labour. The Chairman also revealed that the soft – loan to be given to every successful ex-corps member will be increased to four hundred thousand naira from October 2015.
[Federal Ministry of Youth Development Report]
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