AdminHuman Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has alleged that the Federal Ministry of Youth Development and National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) have failed to pay outstanding arrears of increased N77,000 monthly allowance to over 600,000 corps members.
In a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, HURIWA said the affected corps members were those who served in 2024 and passed without receiving their outstanding allowances.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelHURIWA accused the government of shortchanging the corps members who are yet to receive the difference between the old N33,000 and the improved N77,000 monthly stipends, despite repeated assurances from government officials.
The batches include: Batch A Stream 1 (passed out February 2024); Batch A Stream 2 (passed out April 2024); Batch B Stream 1 (passed out June 2024); Batch B Stream 2 (passed out July 2024); Batch C Stream 1 (passed out October 2024); Batch C Stream 2 (passed out November 2024).
The civil rights group estimates the total number of corps members owed to be around 618,000, assuming approximately 103,000 corps members per batch (103,000 \times 6 = 618,000).
It would be recalled that the Federal Government had announced an increase in the monthly allowance for corps members in September last year from ₦33,000 to ₦77, 000. But it was not implemented despite repeated promises until March 2025, when the government started the payment.
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However, serving corps members and those in the scheme when the increment was announced in September 2024 were promised that they would receive a backdated payment.
Minister of Youth Development, Ayodele Olawande, had given assurance that the arrears would be paid.
“The backlog, we will work on it and make sure it is paid. It may not be immediate, but it will happen,” Olawande assured in March.
The minister explained that the delay in the implementation of the new NYSC members’ allowance is due to budgetary issues.
“I’ve explained this several times. Some people said I always say, ‘It is a process,’ but it’s seriously a process. It’s a government line. You cannot do a corner piece to it. It was not in the budget when the president announced it, and for some agencies and parastatals, you need your salary to be in the budget before it is paid,” the youth development minister said.
“Before anybody can approve anything, you must have a budgetary allocation for it. But the budgetary allocation has been done now. We are done with the process, and it has been approved. It has been signed, and now they can start paying it.”
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HURIWA, however, accused the federal ministry of youth development and the NYSC of shortchanging the corps members who served and left without getting the outstanding arrears of their allowance, as the backlogs were yet to be paid.
With the month of May coming to an end, HURIWA has therefore called on the Minister and Director General of NYSC to explain to Nigerians why those backlogs were yet to be paid.
It stressed that, based on the principles of transparency and accountability, there should have been clear communication on why they failed to keep the promise.
“A Government built on transparency and accountability would have come back to Nigerians through the media of mass communication to offer acceptable and verifiable reasons why both the ministry of youth development and the NYSC management spectacularly failed to keep to the sacred promise of paying these backlogs to corps members who served Nigeria meritorious and are now in the job market searching for employment opportunities,” HURIWA stated.
