The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is overhauling its Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) training for Corps Members through the standardisation of its curriculum to achieve deeper impact.
Brigadier General Olakunle Nafiu, Director General of the Scheme, disclosed this during the 2025 second SAED stakeholders’ summit held in Abuja, themed “Empowering a Generation: Building Competence for the Future Workplace and Enterprise Through Impactful Partnerships.”
Nafiu revealed that the Scheme has undertaken a comprehensive digital transformation of the SAED programme as a strategic pathway to tackling youth unemployment. The updated curriculum now includes skills such as artificial intelligence, mobile application development, and other in-demand competencies.
He further explained that Corps Members are being integrated into the Federal Government’s 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) initiative, as well as global remote work opportunities through platforms like Outsource to Nigeria, NYSC jobs.ng, and the SAED SME toolkit.
Describing the SAED programme as a cornerstone of youth empowerment in Nigeria, Nafiu noted that more than 3.18 million Corps Members have completed entrepreneurship and workplace readiness training since 2012, with over 30,000 businesses formally registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
“They are employing others and contributing to the Gross Domestic Product while demonstrating that our youths are capable change agents,” he added.
The DG emphasised the importance of competence, mastery of SAED skills, and digital fluency for Corps Members to ensure they remain highly competitive in a rapidly evolving global economy.
He also highlighted the recently launched ₦2 billion MSME loan fund for Corps Entrepreneurs, in partnership with the Bank of Industry (BoI), describing it as a landmark achievement in entrepreneurship development. Nafiu praised the NYSC founding fathers for embedding entrepreneurial training as a core objective of the Scheme.
“The unemployment rate as at 1973 was 1.9%, but today it stands at about 6.9%. Nigeria has many young people lacking employability skills. We thank our partners and stakeholders in the SAED programme for collaborating with NYSC to mitigate youth unemployment. Equipping our young people is not just a programme, it is a national assignment, and NYSC is fully committed to it,” he said.
Earlier, the Director of SAED, Mr Kehinde Aremu-Cole, commended stakeholders at the summit for driving transformation across sectors including technology, digital skills, creative industries, entrepreneurship development, financial empowerment, and agricultural revitalisation.
Aremu-Cole praised the various trainings, grants, and mentorship initiatives previously delivered, highlighting their role in shaping Nigeria’s future through the Corps Members.
“Together, we are not just running a programme: we are building a generation. Let us keep empowering, and let us keep believing in the potentials of our young people,” he concluded.
