By Omodele Adigun
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has invoked provisions in Sections 2(4)(4) and 16(1)(C) of the NYSC Act, and approved a far-reaching reform which makes compliance with the National Policy for the Nigeria Education Repository and Databank (NERD), a mandatory requirement for mobilisation into or exemption from the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
This was contained in an enforcement circular recently issued by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator George Akume.
Akume conveyed the approval for the adjustment of “NYSC mobilisation criteria in accordance with the President’s regulation requiring proof of NERD Policy compliance for all prospective Corps members, regardless of where they were educated.”
One of the central requirements of the NERD policy is the submission of academic work including final-year projects, theses, and other scholarly outputs—by Nigerian students. This move is intended to serve as a national quality assurance mechanism and a reliable indicator of academic engagement over time.
Section 6.1.23 of the policy explains this as a tool to “time-stamp” academic involvement, helping to preserve the integrity of Nigeria’s educational qualifications while curbing certificate fraud and the misuse of honorary academic titles.
The SGF’s circular has now clarified a directive earlier issued by the Education Minister, Tunji Alausa, that effective from October 6, no Nigerian graduate – whether from a Nigerian university, polytechnic, college of education, or an overseas institution will henceforth be mobilised for or exempted from NYSC without proof of NERD compliance.
A copy of the approved NERD policy showed that the President also approved an academic output monetisation and reward mechanism for students and their lecturers, which was proposed to the federal cabinet by Alausa to ensure students and lecturers can earn lifetime revenues from their academic deposits. The policy encourages each higher institution to set up its local repository.
In addition, critical data bodies, including the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), are to provide inter-organisation data exchange support via Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to facilitate onboarding and data validation.
While underscoring the significance of the directive, spokesperson for NERD, Haula Galadima, explained that each item deposited by a student shall feature the full name of the student, and those of his supervisor, co-supervisor, if any, and that of the Head of Department, as well as the sponsoring institution and department.
She further stated that, “apart from the mandate to verify for authenticity as a national flagship, the NERD digitisation programme has a clear objective – to raise the bar in the quality of academic content, output and presentation nationwide.
“One way NERD intends to accomplish this task, based on its mandate, is to strengthen the supervision processes in the nation’s higher institutions without getting involved in the processes.
If our eminent scholars are aware that their names will appear next to those of the students they supervise on a globally available digital platform, there is the likelihood that each lecturer would up his or her standard.
“Very few lecturers would want their names associated with poorly produced academic works. NERD is therefore poised to help each lecturer earn his ‘earned allowances’ by providing thorough supervision.”
