The 52-year-old National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) discharged the 2024 Batch C Stream II after completing their one-year mandatory service, making them the final of roughly 400,000 young graduates it mobilizes each year. As a result, the young graduates’ realities and uncertainties about their future have increased.
Recall that the passing out procession was held countrywide on Thursday, December 18, 2025, for the Batch C Stream II of 2024 session who were released following the one-year mandatory service.
Some of the challenges that may impede post-NYSC career chances for some of the discharged corps members include the severe economic conditions in the nation, sustainable seed capital, and the realities of academic training mismatch for a few available jobs.
It was revealed that several of the federation’s discharged corps members are afraid of their employment prospects. Since the government’s N77,000 monthly allowance and corps employers’ pittance have been withheld since the end of the month, several voiced bitterly how they would proceed if the anticipated engagement was delayed.
Conversely, some of them said they were hopeful about using their lifetime careers as a source of income.
Eno Okonnah, a female corps member and University of Calabar English Language graduate, bemoaned the fact that the number of her colleagues assigned to the school as Place of Primary Assignment made it impossible for her to be kept at the private school where she worked.
Ondo State University of Medical Sciences graduate Abigail Omotunde voiced skepticism as the reality of life after NYSC became apparent.
“The passing out, end of service, and thoughts about what next had preoccupied my mind in the last two months,” she remarked. I work as a fashion designer, a marketing representative for medical equipment, and a qualified hair stylist.
“I’ll make a decision within the next two weeks.” During my time as a student, I owned a small store, and I now operate a private practice on campus, catering to both my coworkers and local clients. “The seed money is what I need to keep running the business and make ends meet,” she stated.
Growing Graduation Rate
The number of qualified graduates mobilized for the country has fluctuated over time due to a number of factors, including government admission policies, backlogs from strikes or academic disruptions, university and polytechnic graduation rates, the efficiency and effectiveness of school administrators, and the academic calendar of the schools.
The NYSC program regularly recruited between 350,000 and 400,000 corps members in its three yearly batches of A, B, and C. As a result, managers of the only post-Civil War organization still in existence had to make adjustments to deal with the growing number of graduates trained locally and others from the Diaspora for employment generation.
The Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) program was introduced in 2012 as a complement to the scheme as a result of the concerns.
In addition to the yearly automatic employment provided by governments and labor employers to exceptional corps members, the SAED has supplemented the various efforts of both the federal and state governments in facilitating in-camp and post-camp skills acquisition training for corps members, according to a scheme official who wished to remain anonymous.
The official stated that the NYSC/corporate partnership model continues to be a crucial component of Nigeria’s job creation and youth empowerment strategy, particularly for post-service employment and entrepreneurship, when discussing corporate partnerships in employment generation for the army of graduates mobilized annually for the scheme.
He revealed that the SAED/corporate partnerships strategy has provided start-up financing and training to thousands of corps members every year.
Uniform Entrepreneurial Education
The Director General (DG) of the Scheme, Brigadier-General Olakunle Nafiu, revealed plans to restructure the Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) training for Corps Members by standardizing the curriculum for greater impact during the week of the second SAED stakeholders’ summit in Abuja in 2025.
With over 30,000 enterprises officially registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and over 3.18 million Corps Members trained in entrepreneurship and workplace preparedness since 2012, he characterized the SAED program as a cornerstone of youth empowerment in Nigeria.
The DG further disclosed that Corps members were being integrated into the Federal Government’s 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) program and international remote work opportunities through programs like the SAED SME toolkit, NYSC jobs.ng, and Outsource to Nigeria.
The founder of Ayodeji Megbope Inspires Mentoring Academy, Mrs. Ayodeji Megbope, advised discharged corps members not to be influenced by the nation’s much-discussed economic challenges in an interview, claiming that astute minds can achieve breakthroughs.
“Your possibilities are limitless if a woman who started at 40 with N1000, with kids made fun of for their stew-smelling uniforms, standing at a school gate hawking moin-moin, can rise to own a restaurant and now a Wellness Center,” she stated.
Mrs. Megbope urged all dismissed corps members to overcome their fear of the future, develop their abilities, gain competence, and set themselves up for long-term success.
