By Peace Udugba
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 that 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 line with the President’s directive, which mandates proof of compliance with the NERD Policy for all prospective Corps members, regardless of their country of education.
A key requirement of the NERD policy is the submission of academic work—including final-year projects, theses, and other scholarly outputs—by Nigerian students. The move is aimed at serving as a national quality assurance mechanism and a reliable indicator of academic engagement over time.
Section 6.1.23 of the policy describes this requirement as a tool to “time-stamp” academic involvement—preserving the integrity of Nigeria’s educational qualifications while helping to curb certificate fraud and the misuse of honorary academic titles.
The SGF’s circular also clarified an earlier directive by the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, stating that effective October 6, 2025, no Nigerian graduate—whether from a local university, polytechnic, college of education, or a foreign institution—will be mobilised for or exempted from NYSC without proof of compliance with the NERD policy.
A copy of the approved NERD policy further revealed that President Tinubu also approved an academic output monetisation and reward mechanism for both students and their lecturers. This proposal, submitted by the Education Minister, aims to ensure that individuals can earn lifetime royalties from their academic deposits. The policy also encourages all higher education institutions to establish and maintain local academic repositories
Furthermore, critical national data institutions, including the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC), are to provide inter-agency data exchange support through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to enable seamless onboarding and real-time data validation.
Underscoring the significance of the directive, the spokesperson for NERD, Haula Galadima, explained that every item deposited by a student must include the full name of the student, their supervisor, co-supervisor (if applicable), Head of Department, and the sponsoring institution and department.
She further stated:
“Apart from serving as a national verification tool for authenticity, the NERD digitisation programme has a clear objective — to raise the bar in the quality of academic content, output, and presentation across the country.
“One way NERD intends to achieve this, in line with its mandate, is by strengthening supervision processes in tertiary institutions—without directly interfering. If our eminent scholars know that their names will appear alongside those of the students they supervise on a globally accessible digital platform, there’s a strong likelihood that standards will naturally rise.
“Few lecturers would want to have their names associated with substandard academic work. NERD is therefore poised to help each lecturer truly earn their ‘earned allowances’ by promoting thorough and responsible supervision.”
