FRIDAY- 19th November, 2021: The Minister of Youth and Sports, Sunday Dare, said on Thursday that the National Youth Service Corps scheme cannot be scrapped.
Dare made this claim in response to a question regarding the calls to scrap the NYSC scheme at the State House, adding that the scheme is here to stay.
He warned that the cancellation of the scheme at this point of Nigeria’s history will be calamitous and like throwing the baby away with the bathwater.
The minister stressed that some communities will not survive without Youth corps members.
He said, “The contribution of the NYSC scheme to national development and national unity has been audited. We have communities who wait for youth corpers every year to come and help them with their health facilities.
“We have the CDS programme. Multiple projects across communities are projects done by our youth corpers. And I don’t want to talk about the soft side of the NYSC; marriages, long-term friendships and the rest.”
He said the ministry has begun a gradual review to look at areas it needs to improve to make the Scheme better.
“We don’t throw such programmes away. The largest single concentration of Nigerian youths annually, 320,000, is the NYSC. Some communities will not survive without corpers,” Dare added.
