The Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brigadier General Olakunle Nafiu, has said that the scheme is addressing delays in corps mobilisation through reforms and stakeholder engagement.
He said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Sunday in Abuja, noting the delays were caused by multiple factors.
Nafiu said many of the challenges were outside the direct control of the scheme, particularly issues related to corps producing institutions and data management processes.
“It is not a single factor; delays often come from late uploads by institutions and errors in the data submitted to us,” he said.
According to him, the expansion of tertiary institutions has significantly increased the volume of graduates awaiting mobilisation, thereby complicating coordination and processing.
He said that from about 10 institutions at inception, Nigeria now had more than 120 universities, polytechnics, and monotechnics feeding graduates into the NYSC annually, with some other graduates coming from institutions abroad.
Nafiu explained that institutions often delayed uploading graduates’ details due to internal administrative processes, including result approvals and attempts to batch submissions.
He added that inconsistencies in candidates’ data, especially name variations, also contributed to delays during verification with government databases.
“We rely on data from the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board and National Identity Management Commission, so when there are discrepancies, the system flags errors which must be corrected by the individuals concerned,” he said.
The Director-General said funding constraints also affected mobilisation as the scheme operated within an annual budget tied to a fixed number of corps members.
He said that while about 650,000 graduates were projected for mobilisation, the government approval currently covers 400,000 for the service year, but the Federal Government added 50,000 to the number for 2026.
“In spite of these constraints, we are engaging government and institutions to improve the process and reduce waiting time for prospective corps members,” he said.
Nafiu said that the scheme had restructured its pre-mobilisation process, including mandatory training workshops for student affairs officers in tertiary institutions.
He said the workshops were designed to improve the understanding of mobilisation procedures and reduce errors in data submission by institutions.
“We discovered that some of them do not fully understand the process, so we now use the workshops to train and guide them,” he said.
He added that institutions were now required to notify NYSC promptly when there were changes in student affairs personnel to avoid disruptions.
Nafiu cited a recent instance where five institutions failed to upload students’ data due to changes in personnel, affecting mobilisation timelines.
He said the scheme intervened by extending deadlines and engaging the affected institutions to ensure that students were not unduly disadvantaged.
The Director-General also addressed concerns over difficulties experienced during online registration by prospective corps members.
He said the transition to digital registration since 2014 was aimed at improving efficiency and ensuring accurate data capture through biometric verification.
