The Director General of National Youth Service Corps, Brigadier General YD Ahmed has stated that the Scheme would continue to prevent unqualified persons from participating in National Service.
General Armed disclosed this in his address at the meeting of NYSC Management with some Corps Producing Institutions in Africa, with the theme; “Tackling Emerging Challenges in Mobilization of Foreign-Trained Graduates For Effective National Service”, held in Abuja on Wednesday.
The DG said NYSC programme aims at remodelling the Nigerian youths for national unity and development through inculcation of values such as discipline, honesty, probity, accountability, hardwork, entrepreneurship and self reliance.
General Ahmed added that instead of building world-class graduates in both character and learning and in consonance with the ideals of NYSC, the tendency by school owners to cut corners and maximize financial gain takes the centre stage, leading to antithetical production of graduates.
“It is expected that, from 2024 Batch ‘A’ service year, collection of masterlist of graduates would be extended to schools in Niger Republic, Cameroun, Ghana, and Uganda, which constitutes about 20% of graduates from the African continent.
“The exercise would be extended to cover countries identified with high vulnerability to faking of academic and travel documents”, he said.
The Director General also said the Scheme is doing its best to check the activities of dishonest people adding that the fight against unwholesome practices in the educational sector must be a collective responsibility.
General Ahmed stated further that as part of the measures to overcome the challenges in the mobilization of foreign-trained Nigerian graduates, all schools in Benin Republic, Togo, Cameroun and Niger shall henceforth be submitting project-bound master-list of their graduates to the NYSC every service year.
According to the statement released by the Scheme, the DG said the practice has been available for schools in Nigeria for a number of decades and has proved very useful.
The Director, Corps Mobilization, Hajiya Walida Siddique Isa in her introductory address disclosed that the Scheme would continue to engage countries operating academic systems which manifests elements of deviance from the global best practices and the NYSC established mobilization protocols.
During the meeting, there were goodwill messages from the National Universities Commission (NUC), Federal Ministry of Education and Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs.