The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) in partnership with Heritage Bank Plc, is to make available, over 2 billion Naira to corps members with good business ideas to set up their own businesses.
Speaking at the flag off of a three-day entrepreneurial training for corps members, under the Bank’s Youth Entrepreneurship Development Programme (YEDP) at the FCT NYSC Camp in Kubwa, Abuja, the Central Bank Governor, Godwin Emefiele, said the YEDP seeks to raise a crop of young entrepreneurs who would be employers of labour tomorrow, thereby laying to rest, the often asked question among ex-corps members, “After NYSC, what next?”
Under the initiative, each successful applicant, after the training, will be advanced a maximum of N3,000,000 (three million naira) to enable them go into enterprises such as fish and poultry farming, arts and crafts, tourism, information and communication technology, and any other activity that the Bank may determine from it to time..
Mr Emefiele however, made it clear to the beneficiaries of the facilities that what would be given them was not a grant, but a loan, which must repaid in full.
Beneficiaries of the loan would also be required to deposit their Degree/HND, and NYSC Certificates as collateral.
The Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brigadier-General Sule Kazaure, Managing Director of Heritage Bank, Mr Ifie Sekibo and some NYSC Departmental Directors, among others, graced the occasion.
