As the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) celebrated its Golden Jubilee, Mr Ahigjo Yahaya, the Area Director, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), North East Zone, said that the scheme had done well in the area of national integration in Nigeria.
He also said that the scheme had done creditably well in the area of affiliation and collaboration with different agencies of the government to make the country a better place with different programmes.
Yahaya stated this in Bauchi on Monday, during the Unity Walk, organised by the scheme as part of activities to celebrate its 50 years of existence.
According to him, NYSC produced up to 400,000 corps members in a year in contrast to about 1,000 produced per annum when it was initially established.
“Within these 50 years, I want to inform all Nigerians that we have done very well and we will continue to do very well for the development of Nigeria.
“When we started this scheme in 1973, the corps members were not more than 1,000 in numbers in a year.
“Today, we are up to 400,000 in a year as against 1000 when the scheme first started and you can see the development.
“Also, when we started, our only mandate was national integration. We were mandated to integrate corps members together, but today, we have a lot of programmes apart from national integration,” he said.
He further added that the NYSC had been participating in the election processes in the country which he said, to a large extent, had made the processes successful with the involvement of the corps members.
Yahaya said that the scheme had also introduced skills acquisition programmes where corps members were trained on how to be self-reliant in contrast to when they were only taught how to be corps members in the past.
“We now train them to be professionals so that they would not rely on the white-collar job only.
“We have also expanded our horizons in the community development services where we render health services to all outlets including the villages free of charge,” he said.
Also speaking with newsmen, a corp member, Opeyemi Bakare, lauded NYSC for bringing people of different cultures, religions, languages and ways of life under one roof and unite them.
He said he was getting acclimatised with Bauchi state and its people, adding that he never knew people could be so friendly, nice and tolerant in contrast to what other people say from afar.