Members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) enlisted as digital champions under the Federal Government’s Digital Literacy for All (DL4ALL) programme have trained over 500,000 Nigerians in basic digital skills since the initiative began.
The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, disclosed this today at the NYSC Headquarters in Abuja while presenting eight laptop computers to Corps Members adjudged outstanding in their training and field performance at the national level.
Abdullahi recalled that DL4ALL stemmed from a Presidential mandate directing NITDA to achieve 95 percent digital literacy by 2030, with a mid-term target of 70 percent by 2025. He said that in collaboration with the NYSC, the agency trained 17,760 Corps Members across the country on digital literacy within one year.
In his words, “Approximately 80 champions per state are trained in each batch, amounting to nearly 17,760 champions annually nationwide. Each champion is tasked with training at least two Nigerians daily, translating to a minimum of 60 persons monthly.”
He said the collaboration between NITDA and the NYSC had also supported accelerated diversification through industrialisation, digitisation, creative arts, manufacturing and innovation.
“We have a large size of our population, who are not actively in the formal sector, which are doing petty businesses.
“We have our senior citizens, who are not digitally literate, but we want them to be part of this digital economy we are building,” he said.
The NITDA DG disclosed that the agency had developed a national digital literacy framework in collaboration with the NYSC and would continue to empower Corps Members with information technology skills to enable them educate the public on basic digital skills.
He explained that the target was for each champion to train at least two people daily and 60 people monthly, adding, “this training is going to be one-on-one, in the marketplaces, religious places and motor parks, because these people are mostly the vulnerable groups and victims of online fraud.”
In his remarks, the Director-General of the NYSC, Brigadier General Olakunle Nafiu, commended NITDA for promoting digital literacy nationwide.
Nafiu said that with over 400,000 graduates passing through the Scheme annually, the NYSC was sending refined Corps Members equipped with skills and empowerment tools back to society as job creators and employment ambassadors.
He added that the Corps Members were the perfect channel to drive the critical national objective of digital empowerment for all Nigerians.
Another highlight of the event was the presentation of a dummy cheque of N3.5 million by the NITDA DG to his NYSC counterpart for the Corps digital champions.
The initiative continues nationwide with monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to ensure quality delivery, accountability, inclusion, and sustained community-level impact across all states.
