Make NYSC trust fund your legacy project -HURIWA tells Nigeria’s Senate President

Prominent civil rights advocacy group in Nigeria, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has admonished the Senate president Mr. Godswill Akpabio and the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives to impress it on their collective political godfather, president Bola Ahmed Tinubu to sign into law the recently passed NYSC Youth Trust Fund that has just passed through the Senate.

The Rights group said that the initiative if approved by the President and the NYSC’S Youth Trust Fund is materialised, then it will become a rare legacy for the 10th session of the National Assembly that has gained notoriety as the most pliant and docile legislative chambers in the political annals of Nigeria.

HURIWA said the fund presents a very important opportunity for the Senate and House of Representatives of the Federal Republic to redeem her fast waning public image following a spate of scandals that have manifested in the Senate in the past few days especially the scandalous padding of the 2024 national budget in which Senators allegedly allocated indiscriminate sums of public funds to themselves for the so-called zonal intervention fund which degenerated into a public fiasco with the suspension of the whistleblower Senator Abdul Ningi of Bauchi state.

HURIWA acknowledged that it has been assured that the NYSC’S Youth Trust Fund if established, will “Primarily, be focused or purposed to address the infrastructural deficit besetting the Scheme in the area of camp renovation and maintenance; upgrading, building and maintenance of Corps Members’ Lodges, among others.

The HURIWA Statement further reads:
“Statutorily, the Scheme as it were, has a tripartite funding arrangement – the Federal, State and Local Governments, with each having varying degree of responsibilities.

“Over the years, the Scheme has equally partnered governmental and non-governmental institutions in the area of providing start-up capitals to Corps Members to fund their business initiatives under the NYSC Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development programme which is a direct answer to the often asked rhetorical question: After the NYSC what next?

“The Trust Fund will provide funds to a greater percentage of Corps Members trained under the NYSC Skill Acquisition programme to start-up their businesses.

“It is appropriate to clarify that the Fund which passed public hearing, with civil societies, the academia, among others, fully represented is not a pool of slush fund meant to gratify the financial cravings of top military officers as erroneously stated by the writer of the story.”

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