The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) are set to deepen their partnership to improve corps mobilisation, data management and service delivery to Nigerian youths.
According to an official statement signed by the NYSC Director, Information and Public Relations, Caroline Embu, the NYSC Director General, Brigadier General Olakunle Nafiu, disclosed this when he received the JAMB Registrar/Chief Executive Officer, Professor Segun Aina, in his office in Abuja.
Nafiu described JAMB as a strategic partner in the NYSC mobilisation process, stressing that the Board provides critical primary data used for the online registration of prospective Corps Members.
“We thank the Management of JAMB for their support over the years. We believe so much in the credibility of JAMB, and we have enjoyed seamless API data sharing with JAMB,” he said.
The NYSC DG also congratulated Aina on his appointment, expressing confidence that his experience as a former Corps Member who served with JAMB would contribute to his success as Registrar.
On his part, Aina called for stronger collaboration between both institutions to maximise the contributions of Corps Members and improve their service experience.
The Registrar said his own experience as a Corps Member had played an important role in shaping his career and preparing him for his present responsibility.
He assured that JAMB would continue to uphold strict standards in handling requests for changes to candidates’ data, while making necessary exceptions in genuinely peculiar cases arising from the mobilisation process.
Aina, however, emphasised that such flexibility would not compromise the integrity and reliability of JAMB’s records.
He further announced plans for a new framework involving JAMB, NYSC and the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), which he said would make legitimate data changes more seamless.
The JAMB chief also proposed the deployment of Corps Members to JAMB offices as customer service representatives, saying their involvement would help the Board communicate more effectively with young Nigerians.
“We want to speak directly to the young people, we want to speak the language of young people, and we need other young people to help us do it,” Aina said.
He added: “We want to build an army of customer service representatives by using Corps Members.”
The proposed collaboration is expected to strengthen data interoperability among the agencies, improve the efficiency of the mobilisation process and create additional opportunities for Corps Members to contribute to public service delivery.
