Leadership (Abuja)
Chuks Ohuegbe
14 November 2007
The authorities of the National Youth Service Corps have apprehended about 1,000 fake youth corpers who did not pass through the tertiary institutions but their names were forwarded for mobilization.
Director-general of NYSC, Brigadier-General Yusuf Bomoi who disclosed this yesterday said that the over 1,000 corpers were fished out from 20 tertiary institution by the administrative panel of inquiry.
The NYSC director-general who was the guest of NEWSWORLD Leadership Forum while frowning at the fraudulent activities going on in the nation's tertiary institutions, said that in the next days the ministry of education would be issuing a white paper on the findings of the administrative panel of inquiry.
"The greatest problem we have in NYSC is the fraudulent activities that take place in our tertiary institutions. There are so many Nigerians who have in their possession NYSC certificate without passing through the university.
"We have a case where a hawker was mobilized to serve," Bomoi explained.
The NYSC helmsman said that the provisions of the decree establishing NYSC are now obsolete and need to be amended to ensure discipline.
He regretted situations where corps members flouted the decree and are only made to pay stipends as fine.
"If there are options of fine, let it be stringent. There should not be any option of fine. We have made our views known to the ministry of education," the director-general hinted.
Bomoi said that the major challenge facing the scheme is population explosion, noting that by next year NYSC may be mobilising more than 300,000 corps members. He said that in 2007 NYSC mobilized 175,000 corps members.
He however expressed worry that over 90 per cent of the NYSC members are unemployed after passing out.
In spite of the above, the NYSC director-general insisted that the programme should not be scrapped as is being mooted in some quarters, stressing that NYSC is for national unity.
"I don't support the scrapping of NYSC. It's for national unity. We fought a civil war in this country, NYSC is all about national unity," Bomoi explained.
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