The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has promised to provide business loans to members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), which they will repay in seven years.
The CBN Governor, Dr Godwin Emefiele, said this in Abuja while receiving the NYSC Director-General, Brig. Gen. Shuaibu Ibrahim, in his office on Thursday.
According to the apex bank governor, the loan was conceived out of the need to reduce the unemployment rate in the country.
He tasked NYSC members to attend CBN’s entrepreneurship training centres “to acquire skills in various vocational areas for economic survival at the end of their national service instead of waiting for white-collar jobs.”
The development was contained in a release by the NYSC on Thursday, which stated that the bank will, upon completion of their training, issue loans to corps members to provide support for acquiring working tools and rent of business offices or workshops.
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The statement added, “The Central Bank of Nigeria has expressed willingness to provide further opportunities of self-employment for corps members through its skill acquisition training. The CBN governor explained that upon completion of training, beneficiaries would get the cumulative value which represents a loan that would be repaid within seven years with a two-year moratorium.
“He recalled that an earlier programme, the Youth Entrepreneurship Development Programme was launched by the bank in 2016 and served as a springboard for the empowerment of corps members and other youths for self-employment and wealth creation.
“Emefiele assured the NYSC DG that the CBN National Microfinance Bank would also support interested corps members in business financing. He advocated the patronage of the Nigerian textile industry, which he described, as the largest employer of labour in the country in the 1990s.”