The Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brig.-Gen. Olakunle Nafiu, says female participation in the scheme has consistently surpassed male mobilisation figures since 2021 nationwide.
Nafiu said this in Abuja, ahead of the scheme’s 53rd anniversary, describing it as a milestone in education and gender inclusion.
He said male graduates dominated mobilisation from the scheme’s establishment in 1973 until 2020 before the shift in 2021, when female participation began to exceed male figures annually.
“Since 2021, more females have consistently participated in the scheme than males,” he said, attributing the change to progress in education and gender equality policies.
Nafiu said the development reflected sustained global and national efforts promoting girl-child education, women empowerment and improved access to higher education opportunities across Nigeria.
“It is not magic. The Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals placed premium on girl-child education and gender equality,” he said.
He added that the increasing number of female graduates demonstrated improved educational access and attainment for women as well as the impact of long-term advocacy programmes nationwide.
According to him, policymakers and employers must prepare for demographic shifts that may significantly reshape workforce composition and social policy planning in coming years.
“There are always unintended consequences. When efforts are concentrated on accelerating growth in one area, that area may eventually overtake the other,” he said.
Nafiu said Nigeria was likely to witness a larger female workforce within the next 10 to 15 years due to the ongoing educational trend across institutions nationwide.
“In the next 10 to 15 years, we are likely to have a larger female workforce with increased requests for maternity leave and childcare-related welfare support,” he said.
He urged organisations and human resource systems to begin developing policies capable of addressing changing workforce realities and gender-related labour demands.
Speaking on the Nigerian Education Repository and Databank (NERD), Nafiu said it was designed to preserve academic records and strengthened documentation of graduates’ research outputs nationwide.
“It is a government policy that mandates graduates to upload their theses, projects and academic works into a databank for record and academic referencing purposes,” he said.
He explained that NYSC served as an implementation platform because most graduates pass through the scheme immediately after completing their academic programmes.
“Government knows that the next stop for most graduates is NYSC, so the scheme naturally becomes an enforcement tool for implementing the policy,” he said.
Nafiu said discussions were ongoing to integrate NERD processes digitally with NYSC operations to simplify compliance for prospective corps members nationwide.
According to him, stakeholders proposed seamless Application Programming Interface (API) integration between both systems to improve efficiency and reduce administrative challenges.
“Our goal is to make the process as seamless as possible for prospective corps members through proper digital integration,” he said.
The DG said NYSC would continue adapting to changing realities while sustaining its role in promoting national unity, youth development and social integration across Nigeria.
