Emmanuel O
The Federal Government has announced that the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) will replace its long-standing khaki uniform with locally produced Adire fabric as part of the sweeping reforms recently approved for the scheme.
The Minister of Youth Development, Ayodele Olawande, disclosed this during an appearance on The Morning Brief on Channels Television, on Thursday.
He said move is designed to support local industries by ensuring government spending remains within the country.
“It’s Adire. So, Adire is being produced in Nigeria. We have them in Ogun, we have them in Kwara, we have textile industry. Let’s put our money back into the country,” the minister said.
Olawande also revealed that corps members will, under the proposed reforms, increasingly be deployed according to their academic training and professional qualifications rather than being posted without consideration for their fields of study.
Explaining the new approach, he said graduates with education-related qualifications, for example, would be assigned to schools based on the process completed during orientation camp.
“That after you are leaving the camp, you are not just posted to a school just because NYSC wants you to be in school but because of the process you followed when in camp. So, that is going to give a framework of where you are going to be posted to,” he said.
Addressing concerns over insecurity, the minister said the government is considering posting prospective corps members to areas where they studied or are already familiar with the environment, particularly in regions facing security challenges.
According to him, the arrangement would reduce the need for redeployments while addressing concerns raised by parents and participants.
“If you have interest that you want to go to the North-East why not, but if you don’t have interest, instead of redeploying you, paying people for camp, doing all those funny things, we said no, let us look at it and say who are those in that area, that can reside in those geographical areas and still give us the kind of number we are looking for since we are saying NYSC should be more impactful,” he said.
The minister also dismissed claims that the military would be removed from the NYSC, describing the reports as a misunderstanding of the approved reforms.
“We are not taking the military out of NYSC, it’s just a misconception… Military is not taken away, there is no how you can take the military away. It is just saying that we are moving away from military mobilisation to civilian mobilisation,” he said.
The reforms were approved by the Federal Executive Council on Monday, marking the first comprehensive restructuring of the NYSC since the scheme was established 53 years ago. As part of the decision, the council directed the Attorney-General of the Federation and the Ministry of Youth Development to amend the NYSC Act and relevant regulations to enable implementation of the reforms.
Under the new framework, the NYSC’s operational leadership will be headed by a civilian, while the military will continue to provide security support. The reforms are aimed at transforming the scheme into a skills-driven, productivity-focused and youth-empowerment institution aligned with the Federal Government’s ambition of building a $1 trillion economy.
