FG to require government agencies to accept corps members

The Minister for Youth Development, Ayodele Olawande, has disclosed that the ministry will send a memo to President, Bola Tinubu, mandating all government agencies and parastatals not to reject corps members assigned to them for their mandatory one-year service.

The minister stated this at a press conference in Abuja on Monday, when he was asked about the possibility that prospective corps members may be rejected, despite the FG’s directive revoking the ban on corps members being posted to the private sector.

Recall that the Federal Government on November 19, 2024, lifted the ban restricting the posting of corps members to the public sector, allowing for corps members to now be posted to private sector organisations, including banks and oil and gas companies.

Olawande said in a memo sent to the NYSC, the ministry had directed that there should be no barriers to the posting of the corps members, adding that the ministry was aware of the rejection of corps members from some agencies and parastatals.

“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”, he said.

Addressing the delay in the payment of the N77,000 increased allowance to serving corps members, the minister said 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”, the minister stated.