Ayodele Olawande, the Minister of Youth Development has announced that the federal government will make it compulsory for all government agencies and parastatals to accept corps members posted to them for their mandatory one-year national service.
The Minister who spoke at a press conference in Abuja on Monday, noted that the ministry would send a memo to President Bola Tinubu to formalize this directive.
Olawande revealed that a memo had already been sent to the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), instructing that there should be no barriers to the posting of corps members.
He also addressed concerns about the rejection of corps members by some agencies and explained the government’s stand against such practices.
This move follows the federal government’s recent decision to lift the ban on posting corps members to private sector organizations, including banks and oil and gas companies.
He said: “Let them post them first, then we would tackle the rejection. In part of the memo that we sent to the NYSC, we clearly stated that there is no barrier.
“Before now, there was a barrier that corps members could not be posted to this and that. Banks come and take them. If you don’t have experience in banking, how do you want to know that you are good at accounting or whatever? We should stop lying to ourselves. And this is also part of how you should learn whatever you studied.
“Very soon we are also going to send a memo to the President to tell any government parastatal and agency not to reject anymore. It is a process; we can’t do everything at once. The one in our capacity, we have thrown it out. So, on the barrier, we are also waiting, I know about that too. We will work, and that is why teamwork is good.”
The minister also addressed the delay in the payment of the N77,000 increased allowance to serving corps members, saying the implementation was in process, and that the corpers would begin to receive the allowances “very soon.”
“It is a process. When the government increases so and so, it will follow a process. We are in the process, very soon they will see it. It is not rocket science. It has been increased; nobody is saying it has not been increased. But the implementation is in process. And very soon, we are at the tip of it, it is going to start, and we will implement it perfectly.” he added
