The minister of education, Tunji Alausa, says that compliance with the Nigeria Education Repository and Data Park (NERD) is now mandatory for participation in or exemption from the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
He made this known on Thursday during his keynote address at a national capacity-building program for school representatives organized to support the implementation of NERD.
He said, “It is important to clarify that while NERD compliance is now a prerequisite for participation in, or exemption from, the National Youth Service Corps, enforcement extends far beyond NYSC.
“Agencies such as TETFund, the National Universities Commission, the National Board for Technical Education, the National Commission for Colleges of Education, and the Industrial Training Fund, as well as all accredited tertiary institutions, are mandated to ensure compliance as a condition for accessing their services.”
According to him, the NERD initiative is a national digital infrastructure created to “secure, standardize, digitize, and authenticate academic records across post-secondary and tertiary institutions nationwide.”
Alausa said the NERD platform would “administer national credential numbers, a National Credential Revocation Service, a National Student Clearinghouse, and a federated repository of academic theses and abstracts, as well as a national academic publication and indexing database.”