FG Cancels NYSC Passing-Out Parade, Extends Orientation To Six Weeks
The Federal Government has approved a comprehensive reform of the National Youth Service Corps since its establishment in 1973, replacing military leadership with a civilian Director-General.
The reform includes the restructuring of the scheme into 11 specialised skills-based streams, redesigning of the orientation camp programme and uniform and the amendment of the NYSC Act to give immediate legal effect to the changes.
The Minister of Youth Development, Ayodele Wisdom who briefed journalists in Abuja said the reform process for the NYSC began in 2025 when a committee was constituted to carry out a full review of the scheme which gave rise to the repositioning of the NYSC scheme from a mobilisation exercise into a platform for skills development, job creation, productivity and national growth.
The minister noted that the Ministries of Youth Development and Education and the Office of the Special Adviser to the President on Policy and Coordination worked together to develop the reform framework.
The Special Adviser to the President on Policy and Coordination, Hadiza Bala-Usman, who has oversight of the reform implementation, described the move as the first holistic reform of the scheme in its 53-year history and linked the overhaul to the administration’s ambition of building a one-trillion-dollar economy.
She said the reform now segments the NYSC into 11 distinct core streams, which every corps member will be required to select upon registration based on academic background and personal skills profile.
The orientation camp programme, she further revealed will be redesigned from its current format into a structured six-week curriculum divided into three distinct two-week phases, with two weeks dedicated to civic responsibility, career mapping and corps-stream-specific training aligned with the corps member’s academic background and skills profile and choice.
