The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has intensified efforts to combat certificate forgery by enforcing a new requirement for prospective corps members. All graduates must now present a compliance certificate from the Nigeria Education Repository and Databank (NERD) before being deployed for national service.
NYSC Director-General Announces New Measure
Brigadier General Olakunle Nafiu, the Director-General of the NYSC, announced this directive during his keynote address at the 2026 Batch ‘B’ pre-mobilisation workshop in Abuja. The workshop was themed: ‘Strengthening institutional accountability and compliance in the NYSC mobilisation process for effective service delivery’.
Nafiu explained that the enforcement of the NERD compliance certificate is part of broader efforts to sanitise the system and prevent unqualified or fraudulent graduates from participating in the national service scheme. He stated that the certificate would serve as an additional verification layer to confirm that graduates meet all academic and administrative requirements set by their institutions and regulatory agencies.
Call for Institutional Compliance
The NYSC boss called on corps-producing institutions across the country to intensify sensitisation of their students. He emphasised that every prospective corps member must obtain the NERD compliance certificate before the mobilisation period begins. According to him, institutional compliance at the point of data submission and verification would reduce delays and disputes during the registration and deployment stages.
Nafiu also stressed that responsibility for credible mobilisation should not rest solely with the agency. He urged regulatory agencies, security institutions, and relevant government ministries to deepen collaboration through policy support, capacity building, and strict enforcement of verification protocols.
“When we work in synergy, we ease the path for our prospective corps members, ensuring that their transition from student to national service is smooth, transparent, and credible,” he said. “Let us be bold in confronting the obstacles before us and creative in fashioning solutions that will stand the test of time. Let us build a more accountable, transparent, and efficient mobilisation process for the benefit of all.”
Federal Government’s Digital Transparency Drive
The workshop also featured updates on the federal government’s digital transparency initiative in tertiary education. The Federal Ministry of Education revealed that 119 out of 124 federal government-owned institutions have been integrated into the Federal Tertiary Institutions Governance Transparency Portal (FTIGTP).
Data for the portal is obtained through the Nigerian Education Data Infrastructure, which has so far captured information on 32 million students across 221,229 schools in 21 states. A breakdown provided at the workshop showed that 57 of the 60 federal universities, 35 of the 36 polytechnics, and 27 of the 28 colleges of education have completed uploading and submitting their institutional data to the transparency portal.
The FTIGTP was established to promote accountability and evidence-based decision-making in the governance of tertiary institutions. It provides access to institutional records, including student enrolment figures, budget allocations, research grant disbursements, and details on intervention funding. In 2025, the federal government mandated that all federal tertiary institutions publish key institutional data on their official websites as part of ongoing reforms to improve transparency and public access to information in the education sector.
Strengthening Collaboration
Earlier in her remarks, the NYSC Director of Corps Mobilisation, Rachel Ideawor, described the workshop as a critical platform for strengthening collaboration among the NYSC, institutions, and other stakeholders in the mobilisation value chain. She acknowledged that improvements had been recorded in the mobilisation process in recent years but said more work was needed to optimise service delivery at every stage.
Ideawor urged student affairs officers to fulfil their responsibilities with diligence and integrity and to ensure that the information submitted accurately reflects the true profiles of prospective corps members. She noted that accurate data from institutions remains central to preventing errors, reducing forgery, and protecting the integrity of the scheme.
The workshop was attended by representatives of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), National Universities Commission (NUC), and National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), as well as 266 student affairs officers from various corps-producing institutions nationwide.
