The Director General of the National Youth Service Corps, Brig. Gen. Johnson Olawumi has said that over 400,000 Corps members have been trained on skill acquisition since 2012.
Olawunmi said this in Abuja when the Commander, Guards Brigade, Brig. Gen. Musa Yusuf paid him a visit in his office.
He said “We started that programme since 2012, and since then we have trained over 400,000 Corp members in various skill acquisition programmes, we are talking about twelve skills set, so, sometimes I get surprised when people suggest NYSC should engage in skill acquisition, and we have been doing that and we are still going to do more.
“We are partnering with organisations that focuses on property development under the sponsorship of the world Bank, where we want to improve the skills of corps members who might be involved in all sectors of property development that is going to start from any moment from now.”
He also revealed that NYSC has secured N200M Bank Facility for disbursement to Corps Members as loans to start up a business after their skill acquisition training.
“We have been doing a lot to ensure they have access to start-up capital, for example we have NYSC foundation, as we speak the foundation has just approved a loan of N10 million for corps members and based on the business plan, they could get between N250,000 and 400,000,
“We have also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Bank of Industry, though it’s yet to take off but we are working on it. About couple of months ago, I also approached Heritage Bank, and it is also setting aside a sum of N250 million under a package where corps members will get some soft loans and the only collateral they will use will be their discharge certificate,” he added.