Brig.-Gen. Suleiman Kazaure, the Director-General, National Youth Service Corps, on Wednesday blamed the rising unemployment statistics bedeviling the nation on years of bad leadership and corruption in the polity.

Kazaure spoke during his working visit to the NYSC Permanent Orientation Camp in Sagamu, Ogun, while interacting with the Batch ‘B’ Stream II corps members currently undergoing orientation.

According to him, years of mismanagement and oil revenue dependency gave rise to the present condition, which he said, could have been avoided through stringent economic diversification protocols and infrastructure development.

Kazaure, represented by Alhaji Abdulrazak Salawu, the NYSC Director of Human Resource Management, however, tasked corps members to offset the status quo by adopting a “can-do” attitude toward national development.

He said: “This country is overwhelmed by an abundance of divergent resources it has. It is quite absurd that we are still lamenting high level of poverty and unemployment in this time, it shouldn’t be.

“What we need is purposeful leadership, because God has blessed us with all we need to be a great nation in the true terms of it.

“I want you to make up your mind to make Nigeria great; have the mindset that you want to make that difference and things will change.





“Our problems can only be solved with a positive outlook to situations.

“This is not the time to despair, but to do what we can to arrest the dire situation we are faced with.”

The NYSC chief then advised corps members to take seriously the NYSC Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development programme designed to enable corps members to be self-dependent even after the service year.

He said: “Please don’t look for white-collar jobs, your skills and potential can serve you better in the way of realising your dreams.”

Kazaure also said that youths must learn to shun the use of hard drugs, which he said, was capable of truncating promising destinies, urging them to maintain a lifestyle of discipline.

In her remarks, the NYSC State Coordinator in Ogun, Josephine Bakare, thanked the director-general for the visit.

Bakare urged corps members to abide by the rules of the scheme while integrating with their host communities.

According to her, of the 2,042 corps members who registered for the orientation programme, 50 had relocated on the grounds of marital and healthcare.

Bakare said: “Twenty were redeployed on marital grounds, while 30 relocated on health grounds.”

She further called on the state government to ease the burden of corps members by paying them allowances to supplement their monthly statutory allowances from the federal government.