The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) announced it is completely changing its Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) training for corps members by making the curriculum the same for everyone so that it has a bigger effect.
The authority added that Brigadier General Olakunle Nafiu, the Director General (DG) of the Scheme, said this in his speech at the second SAED stakeholders’ meeting in Abuja in 2025.
The theme of his summit was “Empowering a Generation: Building Competence for the Future Workplace and Enterprise Through Impactful Partnerships.”
Nafiu, who said the Scheme had begun a full digital transformation of the SAED program as a strategy to fight youth unemployment, said the new curriculum encompassed skills like artificial intelligence and mobile app development, among other things.
He also said that Corps Members were being included in the Federal Government’s 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) program and that they could also find remote employment opportunities throughout the world through programs like Outsource to Nigeria, NYSC jobs.ng, and the SAED SME toolkit.
He called the SAED program a key part of empowering young people in Nigeria. Since 2012, more than 3.18 million Corps Members have finished training in entrepreneurship and getting ready for employment. More than 30,000 enterprises have also been officially established with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
“They are hiring people and adding to the Gross Domestic Product, which shows that our young people can be agents of change,” he said.
The DG said that Corps Members need to focus more on competency, mastering the SAED skills, and being able to use technology fluently in order to be very competitive in a world that is changing quickly.
He said that the ₦2 billion MSME loan fund for Corps Entrepreneurs, which was recently started in cooperation with the Bank of Industry (BoI), is a major step forward in the effort to promote entrepreneurship.
Nafiu praised the NYSC’s founding fathers for their vision in planning and providing the groundwork for business training, which is one of the scheme’s goals.
In 1973, the unemployment rate was 1.9%. Now, it’s roughly 6.9%. A lot of young people in Nigeria don’t have the skills they need to get jobs.
“We applaud our partners and stakeholders in the SAED program for working with the NYSC to help fight youth unemployment in Nigeria.
“We need to be dedicated to giving power to a generation whose creativity and business sense will make the country rich in the future.”
He stated, “Equipping our young people is not just a program, it is a national assignment, and NYSC is fully committed to it.”
He told everyone in the conference to come up with new ways to give Corps Members the skills, creativity, and confidence they need to live in today’s world.
The Director of SAED, Kehinde Aremu-Cole, thanked the people at the summit for making changes in many areas, including technology and digital skills, the creative industries, entrepreneurship development, financial empowerment, and the revival of agriculture.
Aremu-Cole said that all the training, funding, and mentorship sessions they had given before were great, and that they were helping to shape Nigeria’s future through the Corps Members.
He told them to set up specific funding paths that would turn people’s wants and skills into businesses that make money.
“We’re not just running a program together; we’re building a generation.”
He remarked, “Let’s keep giving our young people power and believing in their potential.”
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