The increasing spate of rejection which many
participants in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has been
suffering in the hands of potential host organisations has
incurred the wrath of the Lagos State coordinator of the scheme,
Anthony Ani.
An angry Mr. Ani lamented the web of
rejection subjected to many of the fresh graduates by their
spaces of primary assignment for the one year compulsory scheme
is getting out of hand. What pains him most, he said, is that
many corporate organisation especially banks as well as some
institution are forming the habit of rejecting male corps
members posted to them. They prefer beautiful female corps who
they orientate into prostitution in order to attract more
clients.
"Banks are using our female corps members as
prostitutes in order to attract clients. We noticed that it is
only our female that often has their needed statistics no matter
how good the males are".
Ani who also accused some parents of going
the extra mile to ensure that their children are posted to
certain states and companies stressed that the 35-year-old NYSC
can hardly be said to be blossoming and need to be beefed up in
so many aspects.
For Dr. David Oyedepo, Chancellor and
Chairman, Board of Regents of Covenant University, the NYSC has
outlived its usefulness and should either be scrapped completely
or overhauled thoroughly.
His grouse is the miserly manner the body is
rationing out to universities including Covenant University a
very meager quota in terms of the member of fresh graduands
allowed to participate in the scheme annually.
As he puts it, "it is not only that
Government is neglecting one of its most important
responsibilities of education and re-orientation, it is also
failing to pick up basic responsibility in positive engagement
off the great potentials being turned out from the
universities---covenant university admonishes every well meaning
Nigerian to take appropriate steps to help these young ones to
attain their potentials rather than frustrate them with
impunity. This is a nation where we have refused to make things
work"
He was responding to last year’s quota given
covenant university by the NYSC which restricted it to 39
students from the over 1,200 qualified graduands of the school.
Making a breakdown of some of the problems
hindering the progress of the NYSC, the Director-General,
Brigadier Yusuf Bomoi who said that his organisation needs a sum
of N4.3billion to adequately cater for the estimated 300,000
corps members in on-going 2008 session, claimed that a whopping
sum of N144,000 is spent on the upkeep of each corper. The NYSC
boss accused the authorities of corps mobilising institutions of
generating fake corps members thereby escalating expenditures.
He stated that his organisation is awaiting the decision of the
Federal Government on the out come of the report of the
ministerial panel set up to look into issues of corps
mobilisation where 20 higher institutions visited were inducted
out of 126.
Contributing to the current debates across
all sections of the country on the continued relevance or the
wise of NYSC scheme, the Director General of the National
Directorate of Employment (NDE) Mr. Samuel Adelodun proposed
that the mandatory one-year NYSC service be extended to two
years in order to curtail unemployment.
Estimating the current employment level in
the country at 3,334,139, Adelodun stressed that about 39 per
cent of the registered unemployed had remained unable to get any
job over the past five years adding that a sizeable number of
them are NYSC products.
Champion Scholar investigations revealed
that the three-batches- per year been currently operated by the
NYSC may be increased to four- batches next year in view of
consistent growth in the number of graduates been churned out by
the country’s tertiary institutions including the private
universities and polytechnics. Similarly, some of the measures
adopted by the NYSC to keep the number of qualified intakes
under control seem not to be yielding any dividend. The measures
includes, turning back some intakes on grounds of age,
pregnancy.
