By Caleb Ayansina

On March 2012, the Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) programme of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) was inaugurated to address unemployment in the country. Though the programme has trained over 500,000 graduates since its inauguration, the leadership of the scheme said it had not yet satisfied with its achievements. In this interview, the NYSC Director of SAED, Mrs Mary Danabia, speaks on relevance of the programme and factors militating against it.

Danabia, NYSC chief

Excerpts: 

What brought about the creation of the Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) in the NYSC programme?

Initially, the NYSC focused on unity and integration. But as time went on, it became imperative we needed to address other objectives of establishing the scheme and one of them is the 7th that seeks to inculcate the spirit of self reliance in our young graduates. When we started, it was very rosy. I recall that before you are through with the NYSC, you already had two to three job offers. But along the line, it was not so with the trend of things in the country. Lots of corps members come out without any job. The issue of unemployment became more glaring. As a dynamic institution, the NYSC became worried with the ugly trend and decided to address the issue.

Since our mandate is to inculcate the spirit of self reliance in our young people, we started up with what we call cooperative ventures, where we got some grants for some corps members and it paid off for those who did it successfully. We also started collaborating with the Central Bank of Nigeria, training our corps members in developing feasibility studies and business plans. Even with the NDE, we worked with them to see how they can start up business of their own. But starting a business is not a tea party. We needed some rudiments. We also brought in some people that introduced certain vocational skills. We then created a department of Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurial Development (SAED), in a bid to address the unemployment issue.

What are the achievements of the programme so far?

As at the end of 2013, we have been able to train over 410, 000 corps members on skills acquisition and entrepreneurship, if I add the 2015 batch A, we will be looking at over 500, 000 corps members who have been exposed to the message of acquiring skills and becoming entrepreneurs. We went into broad collaboration with international and national organizations to assist us to set up the department, and get it running as it is. For us to have been able to train the corps members and come out with entrepreneurs, I can tell you that we now have 1,600 corps members who have become entrepreneurs till date (that is those who registered with CAC). That’s part of our achievement. Now, we have to an extent removed the fear of finishing service and waiting for a job. Now while they are waiting for a job, they could use their hands and skills acquired to earn some little money.

How has the NYSC been able to train corps members on entrepreneurship development?

First of all, during the orientation programme in camp, we try to sensitize them and change their mindset from looking for jobs to creating jobs. We bring out about 30 hours; three hours of 10 days to get them through this. We get people to talk to them on the need to change their minds from looking for jobs and the needs to become entrepreneurs. We also expose them to entrepreneurship development. We get resource persons who would talk with them in three days and introduce them to entrepreneurship. They will take them through the course content during which they learn how to start business on their own, how to manage it and go through it and how to also develop business proposals. We also introduce them to different skills and we expect them to choose one of their choices and then they have five days hands-on training. It is then expected that as they finish, they leave and then during their primary assignment, for those who couldn’t complete the training, it is expected that they would go through the training during their primary assignment.

Is there any monetary support from the NYSC for any corps member who desires to establish their own businesses?

You know NYSC has no money, so if it is to give them money, we don’t have to give them. But what we try to do is train and get them to do good business proposals, and we link them up to the funding institutions like the CBN who is actually doing something. Bank of Industry is also there, Bank of Agriculture is also there and there are some other organizations that are willing to sponsor them, so once they are done with their business proposal, they send it.

Most times, what we do to encourage them is that right from camp during the introduction/training programme, we have a business plan writing competition and that usually spurs them. From their training, they begin to develop their business proposal. Like here now, we have some that we have sent to the bank of industry while we hope that they will respond. In bank of industry, they realize that most people who submit proposals to them don’t meet their standards, so they have now commissioned about 120 business development service providers nationwide.

So, what we do now is that when they submit, we take the proposals to those service providers to look at them and try to make those proposals get to standard before we submit to bank of industry. For Bank of Industry, I might not tell you the exact number but they have been sponsoring some of them. Some of the micro finance institutions have also been able to sponsor. But the interest rates in the commercial banks have been quite high so we have not been able to get our corps members to benefit from those ones. Some of them have come but when you look at the interest rates and looking at these young people, it’s very high, so we always go to the bank of Industry because they have what is called the state matching funds.

Considering the fact that most agencies of government are addressing youth unemployment through entrepreneurship training, what is the relevance of NYSC SAED?

 For instance, if I talk about NDE that is into addressing that issue, NDE specifically deals with unschooled youth while NYSC deals with schooled youths. If we are able to get one schooled youth empowered others can be empowered because there is tendency to for them to use the unschooled ones. That is where our relevance comes in.

These are graduates, so they have potentials if properly unlocked, it will expand. That’s the advantage we have over others agencies. If there are more graduates who are into giving skills to others, then it will be better. What we have with the NDE are the artisans. They train the artisans or they get the artisans already trained to train the unschooled ones. The NYSC houses the graduate youths who have a lot of potentials in them. They are also very creative. I tell you, if you teach a corps member the rudiments of producing cakes, he gets into the internet and make better cakes.

What are the challenges faced by the NYSC in ensuring that corps members become entrepreneur?

 The major challenge is funding. We would like to after orientation, bring them back for about three weeks and give them some training. We would also need skills acquisition centres, where they could do the training. If we can have our skills acquisition centre, we will monitor properly, because you will know what they need and give them what they need. Like now, what we do is to introduce them to various people and they just go there and get trained.

Another major problem is that we lack skills acquisition centers which are very important. The other aspect is the lack of resource persons. For now, we still depend on those various organizations that give us people to teach vocation and entrepreneurial skills. But we are looking for sponsors to train the NYSC staff to begin to institutionalize the training. If we have resource person within the organization, it will be very easy for us because we won’t limit our training to 10 days in camp, it will be something we will do throughout the year.

What are the projections of the NYSC SAED in the future?

I want to see the NYSC in a position where when we finish we are not sourcing for people to come and sponsor them. I want a situation where people will be waiting for the entrepreneurs. We had planned to have an entrepreneurship festival where we wanted to showcase those ones. We want to see a situation where their produce will be collected from them and exported. We want to see a situation where we will have skills acquisition centres where we post our corps members to go and do their training and they come out refined.