Leadership (Abuja)
Chuks Ohuegbe
15 November 2007
Abuja — The authorities of the National Youth Service Corps have apprehended about 1,000 fake youth corpers who did not pass through tertiary institutions but their names were forwarded for mobilisation.
Director-general of NYSC, Brigadier-General Yusuf Bomoi, who disclosed this yesterday, said that the fake corpers were fished out from 20 tertiary institutions by the administrative panel of inquiry.
The director-general, who was the guest of NEWSWORLD Leadership Forum, frowned at the fraudulent activities going on in the nation's tertiary institutions, saying that in the next few 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 mobilised to serve," Bomoi explained.
The NYSC helmsman said that the provisions of the decree establishing NYSC were obsolete and needed to be amended to ensure discipline.
He regretted situations where corps members flouted the decree and were 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," he hinted.
Bomoi said the major challenge facing the scheme is population explosion, noting that by next year NYSC may be mobilising more than 300,000 corps members. This year NYSC mobilised 175,000 corps members.
He, however, expressed worry that over 90 per cent of the NYSC members were unemployed after passing out.
In spite of the above, Bomoi insisted that the programme should not be scrapped as was being mooted in some quarters, stressing that NYSC was 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," he explained.
Read comments. Write your own.
Copyright © 2007 Leadership. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
It's a good thing NYSC has done, detecting the fake corps, I feel they should be severely punished for the act because if they are not, other thinking of such act will not learn. this is my view.