Many students and corps members in Nigeria are unaware that they can buy goods and pay for various services from about 1,815 firms at a discount of up to 50 per cent.
Abimbola Daramola, a former member in the Federal House of Representatives, Abuja, said signing up for the Nigerian Students and Youth Corps Discount Card enables undergraduates of both public and private tertiary institutions to enjoy the discount.
The card is designed like an ATM Card with a chip as well as the name and passport photograph of the bearer on it. It allows them to enjoy discounts in supermarkets, fashion stores, book shops, restaurants, hotels, hospitals, airlines and others once they present the card.
Daramola, who represented Ekiti North Federal Constituency I in the House of Representatives (2010-2012), said the initiative, which is already in practice in some developed and African countries, would provide a social net for young people, especially given the current economic challenges. While the elderly and young children enjoy some form of social support in Nigeria, Daramola said there was hardly any notable programme for students.
“The idea of palliatives and social protection plan of federal government, to accommodate, to take away bare knuckle pains that different catchments of the society go through. They have something for the elderly, for the unemployed, among others. This is a social protection plan like no other, particularly penitent for this demographic group,” he said.
Since its launch in March, 1,000 students and corps members have signed up for the discount card, popular called the Naija Green Card at the cost of N1,000. He said the initiative has the endorsement of the Federal Ministry of Education, National Universities Commission (NUC), National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Committee of Vice Chancellors, and the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS).
Beyond purchase of goods and services, Daramola said there is an academic bent to the project as plans are in progress to provide an online database of scholarly articles that can be accessed by bearers of the card.
“The Academic Village project is aimed at promoting scholarship, knowledge transfer, sharing and acquisition. We have a portal where lecturers in our tertiary institutions can put a brief bio on our site and also put up their publications, academic papers for access to students on the Naija Green Card at an affordable rate,” he said.
Daramola said many tertiary institutions that have endorsed the card are waiting to be activated, an exercise he said is expensive. The former lawmaker said he embarked on the project not to make money but because of his genuine concern for education and youth empowerment.
“You do not go into education to make money. I produced a collection of past questions of the Unified Matriculation Examination (now UTME) dating back to 21 years without making money from it. Yoruba’s have a saying that any tradition that you are doing and you don’t bring the youth into it, before you know it, it would soon go into extinction. So I am concerned as a person, about the youth. And that is why we have come up with what we are doing today,” he said.
Daramola said the next phase in the development of the card, which is renewable yearly, would be to make it a payment card which can be loaded with money.
