President, National Inter-Faith and Religious Organization for Peace, Bishop Sunday Garuba, say the proposed National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Trust Fund will address the unemployment crisis in Nigeria.
In a special message on the group’s reflections for 2021, the cleric commended the sponsors of the bill to establish the Fund, which aims to “provide a sustainable source of funds for the NYSC, skill acquisition training and provision of start-up capital to corps members, train and retrain the personnel of the NYSC, develop camps and the NYSC formations and provide facilities therein.”
Bishop Garuba said the bill, when passed, would also improve the general welfare of corps members and personnel of the scheme and enhance their preparedness to effectively discharge their statutory duties of promoting national unity, integration, self-reliance and accelerated development of the national economy.
He commended the NYSC Director-General, Brigadier-General Shuaibu Ibrahim, for rejuvenating the Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) programme to empower young Nigerians for self-reliance.
He said with the NYSC’s SAED initiative, many young Nigerians had embraced entrepreneurship and were now full-scale business owners and employers.
The cleric also acknowledged the efforts of the NYSC DG in flushing out fake graduates from participating in the scheme, revenue generation and infrastructural face-lift.
He said the DG’s exceptional leadership came to the fore during the peak of the coronavirus where corps members rendered medical services.