It is estimated that the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) will spend about ₦307.6 billion on recruiting and compensating corps members.
This projection reportedly relies on the NYSC’s September 2024 announcement that the monthly stipends for corps members have increased from ₦33,000 to ₦77,000.
After the new minimum wage bill was approved and signed into law in May 2024, the increase was implemented.
The NYSC deploys corps members to the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory in three batches each year: A, B, and C. On average, the program recruits 1,200 to 1,500 corps members per camp for each orientation exercise.
This means that each batch typically consists of 55,500 corps members, increasing the annual mobilization to 333,000.
Now that every corps member is eligible for ₦77,000, the total compensation for a single batch is ₦25.64 billion. Allowances for corps members are projected to cost ₦307.6 billion over the course of a year.
The NYSC received the largest budgetary allocation in five years, ₦430.7 billion, from the Federal Government in the 2025 budget proposal that President Bola Tinubu submitted to the National Assembly in December 2024.
Of this sum, ₦372.9 billion, or 86.5 percent of the entire allotment, was set aside for the salary of corps members.
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On September 25, 2024, the Federal Government announced the new allowance structure, although the payments at the updated rate have not yet been made five months later.
The NYSC was still awaiting the necessary financial support, Caroline Embu, acting Director of Press and Public Relations, explained when the increase was not implemented in February.
“We are still awaiting the financial support,” Embu responded succinctly to a reporter for The Punch.
Furthermore, the recently appointed NYSC Director-General, Brig. Gen. Olakunle Nafiu, allegedly promised that the new payment system will go into force in March in a WhatsApp conversation obtained by The Punch on Wednesday.
