The National Youth Service Corps may spend up to N307.6 billion on recruiting new members and providing them with benefits.
This sum is in accordance with the NYSC’s September 2024 announcement that the stipend for corps members have increased from N33,000 to N77,000. The hike came after the new minimum wage bill was signed into law in May 2024.
For the orientation exercise, the NYSC typically mobilises 1,200–1,500 corps members across camps in the Federal Capital Territory and the 36 states. Every year, there are three batches of mobilisation: A, B, and C.
As a result, each batch typically consists of 55,500 corps members, increasing the annual total of corps members mobilised to 333,000.
Now that each corps member receives N77,000, a batch’s total payout comes to N25.64 billion. This raises the total sum allotted for corps members’ allowances to N307.6 billion for the year.
The NYSC received the largest financial allocation in the previous five years, N430.7 billion, from the Federal Government in the 2025 budget plan that President Bola Tinubu submitted to the National Assembly in December 2024.
Eighty-six percent of this sum, or N372.9 billion, was set aside for the payment of allowances to corps members.
Five months after the announcement on September 25, 2024, the Federal Government is failed to start paying the new N77,000 allowance rate.
Caroline Embu, the interim director of press and public relations, clarified that the NYSC was still expecting the required financial support following the inability to execute the payments in February.
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“The cash backing is still being awaited,” Embu said in a brief response to our correspondent.
Brig. Gen. Olakunle Nafiu, the recently appointed Director-General of the Scheme, allegedly promised that payments will start in March in a WhatsApp chat that our journalist saw on Wednesday.
Calls and texts to the NYSC spokeswoman were not returned, indicating that attempts to contact her for more remarks on the matter were futile.
