The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III, has lauded the National Youth Service Corp’s (NYSC) governing board and management for sustaining the scheme’s potentialities, national integration and unity.
Abubakar made the call when he received the NYSC board members in his palace on Monday in Sokoto.
He described the scheme as catalyst for the nation’s integration, development and unity among religion and ethnic groups in the country.
The Sultan stressed that the agitation for the scrapping of the NYSC scheme was not in the interest of Nigeria’s unity.
He explained that the NYSC scheme was established to foster the nation’s unity and strengthen ties among Nigerians.
According to him, the NYSC scheme is the most needed programme in view of the present situation when Nigeria is almost divided along different lines.
While welcoming the board members to Sokoto state, he said that the state was the most peaceful in Nigeria.
He implored leaders to speak up when things were going wrong, saying injustice must also be addressed to calm tension and agitations.
Earlier, Amb. Fatima Balla-Abubakar, the Chairman of the NYSC National Governing Board, congratulated the Sultan on his 15th anniversary on the throne and wished him continuous Allah’s guidance and protection.
Balla-Abubakar noted that the NYSC had the potential to drive Nigeria’s economic recovery process as the scheme could empower the youths endowed with various talents to achieve success.
She, therefore, called for support towards the success of the laudable initiative.
The Board Chairman said that in spite of the challenges the scheme had faced since its establishment it had lived up to expectations by being creative and innovative.
She said that the scheme had metamorphosed into other roles such as providing skills acquisition to its members through the NYSC Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development Programme.
”One major challenge of the scheme, however, is the increasing population of corps members amidst dwindling resources to comfortably cater for these participants,” she said. (NAN)
