With background of kidnapping, killings, robbing and other menaces encountered by members of National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) across the country, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain and former Delta State gubernatorial aspirant, Chief Sunny Onuesoke, has advised the Federal Government to either scrap or rejig the programme.
The one-year mandatory programme for Nigerians was established in 1973, three years after the Nigerian Civil War to, among other objectives, foster national unity and integration in the country.
Decades later, Onuesoke is of the opinion that it has outlived its usefulness and that is no longer relevant. He therefore appealed to President Bola Tinubu to suspend the programme.
The PDP chieftain in a statement questioned the usefulness of the scheme hence the expected deliverables were not met. He recalled that many young Nigerians have lost their lives on the road in the cause of serving NYSC.
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“It’s absurd as over the years, the NYSC programme has since been abused by the management as it has turned to the opposite of what it’s created for. Beside, rising insecurity in various parts of the country has made the scheme become become outdated.
“The scheme is no longer a safe practice considering the fact that innocent, naive youth graduates are deployed to communities and regions they know nothing about, which increases the chances of them being hurt for the one year period of the programme,” he stated.
Onuesoke queried the essence of sending university graduates to serve NYSC scheme when the constitutional qualification of President, Senators, Reps, Ministers, Commissioners and other elected officers have school certificate qualification?
“How can a senators, governors or president now questioning Commissioners or Ministers nominees about NYSC certificates whereas it takes them ordinary school certificates to become senator, governors or president?, he queried .
He lamented that due to insecurity across the country, the top NYSC management officials now gave considerations to posting corps members to their geopolitical zone, thereby defeating one of the objectives for setting up the scheme.
“The objective of NYSC is to create unity in the country and for us to understand ourselves. But what is the essence when a senior official of NYSC who is from Lagos State influence posting of prospective youth corper who is from Lagos state and schooled in Lagos state to serve in the state? In this case, the unity we are protecting has been defeated,” he argued.
Onuesoke however advised that if the NYSC Scheme cannot be scrapped, it should be restructured to suit the modern day development.
“What I mean is that the scheme should be redeveloped into regional human development programme, where graduate will be trained in vocational skill and mentored for a year on developing solutions to their regions problems. The fund budgeted for salaries and others miscellaneous should be paid to youth graduates to start off business of their own after acquiring skills,” he advised.
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