The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Youth Development, Mrs. Rabi Shuaibu Jimeta mni, 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.Mrs. Rabi Jimeta made this charge today in her Office while welcoming a six-man delegation of the Governing Board of the National Youth Service Corps Foundation that called to pay her a courtesy visit.
The Permanent Secretary commended the Foundation for the valuable support it has been rendering over the years to the NYSC; more importantly for instituting a soft loan scheme geared towards empowering ex-Corp members to set up small scale businesses in order to reduce graduate unemployment among our teeming youth.
She emphasized that the financial burden involved in catering for the ever-increasing numbers of corp members being turned out yearly by both the public and private tertiary institutions is too much for the Federal Government to bear alone. She therefore welcomes more assistance from well meaning individuals and organizations.
Mrs. Rabi Jimeta who pledged the Ministry’s support and encouragement thereafter commended the skill acquisition and economic empowerment initiative of the Foundation geared towards enhancing self-employment capacity of corp members; urging all Nigeria parents to regard themselves as stakeholders of the scheme.
Earlier on, the Chairman of the Foundation – Dr Abubakar Abdullahi 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 has the objective of assisting the Federal Government sustain the noble NYSC scheme through improvement in the quality of lives of this vibrant category of our youth and assist them stand on their own after the service.
Dr. Abdullahi disclosed that the Foundation will soon host a Fund Raising Dinner to generate funds which will be used as loans to deserving ex-corps members with good business plans who are desirous of being self employed and future employers of labour. The chairman also disclosed that the soft loan to be given to successful ex-corp members will be increased to four hundred thousand Naira from October 2015.
Tolu Makinde
Head of Press & Public Relations
