By David Olalekan.
The National Youth Service Corps Foundation has lamented the challenges being faced with defaulting corps members who took loans ranging from N300,000 and N400,000 to start small businesses but refused to pay after about four years.
The Foundation further disclosed that it is currently in search of 75 ex-corps members, who used their certificates as collateral, which was the only condition required to access the loans.
The Chief Executive Officer of the NYSC Foundation, Bako Ventim, made the disclosure yesterday, during the opening of Skills’ Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development workshop at the NYSC Orientation Camp in Kubwa, Abuja.
He said, “We have been providing loans to corps members and our interest rate is one digit. There is no collateral except the NYSC certificate and two guarantors. We make the conditions very flexible so that the corps members can benefit from these loans.
“We have a challenge where corps members have refused to pay back the loans. We have over 100 corps members who took the loans but some of them have not paid back and we still have their NYSC certificates with us. They have not come to claim these certificates for a number of years.
“We give as much as between N300,000 and N400,000 depending on the business proposals. From the records, we have over 75 corps members that have defaulted and we are pursuing them”, Mr Ventim stated.