Good News: Unemployed graduates to start earning N19,800 monthly allowance

Succour may soon come to unemployed
graduates in Nigeria if the recommendation
of one of the committees at the ongoing
National Conference is accepted at the
plenary and by the Federal Government. Our
correspondent learnt that the conference's
Committee on Law, Judiciary, Human Rights
and Legal Reform had recommended that
each unemployed graduate should be paid a
monthly allowance equivalent to the
allowance of members of the National Youth
Service Corps. Presently, the Federal
Government pays each corps member a
monthly allowance of N19,800 A member of
the committee said the recommendation was
one of the ways the committee members felt
that crime could be reduced in the country.
Apart from that, the source said the
members felt that the action would force the
Federal Government to be alive to its
responsibility of providing welfare to its
citizens. The committee member, who asked
not to be named, said, "The recommendation
is our own way of finding solutions to the
rising wave of crime in the country and to
also force the government to do the needful
for the increasing number of unemployed
graduates in the country. "We have done our
part and it is left for the delegates to either
reject or accept it at plenary." Meanwhile,
after three weeks of intensive committee
work, the plenary session of the National
Conference resumes on Monday (today) in
Abuja with commencement of the
consideration of reports of the 20 committees
assigned to handle critical national issues.
While some of the committees had already
submitted signed copies of their reports with
agreed-upon recommendations to the
conference secretariat for distribution to
delegates, others, as at Sunday, were still
busy with the collation of their final reports.
It would be recalled that at specific times
within the three weeks, the committees'
leadership met with the conference
management, comprising the Chairman,
Deputy Chairman, the Secretary and the
three assistant secretaries to rub minds on
certain issues to facilitate their work. It was
during one of those meetings that the issue
of time extension for committees, from two
to three weeks, was discussed, agreed upon
and implemented in view of the workload
assigned each of the committees and the
various national public holidays that
followed. Submission of Committee Reports
to the Conference is in line with Order 12(d-
e) of the National Conference Procedure
Rules 2014, which states that, "Each
Committee shall submit to the Conference
the report of its activities.