THE national board of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has ruled out a one- year military training for corps members, as being canvassed by some interest groups.
Board Chairman Alhaji Tijani Adekanbi spoke yesterday in Minna, the Niger State capital, when he visited Acting Governor Ahmed Musa Ibeto at the Government House.
He said the board’s decision was taken after wide consultations.
Adekanbi said the scheme could not give military training to corps members because there would be nowhere in the Armed Forces to post the corps members to after the training.
He said: “If we give them one year military training, we have to absorb them into any of the services.
“If they are allowed to be on their own after the training, it will be dangerous for the country.”
The board chairman also said the NYSC would fine-tune the Community Development (CD) service to ensure that “overambitious projects with huge financial demands are not embarked upon by corps members”.
Adekanbi admitted that CD projects had assisted in the development of communities.
He said such finetuning would require that projects were scrutinised by the NYSC secretariat before supporting them.
The board chairman advised employers of labour to be more vigilant and assist the scheme to check the activities of operators of fake NYSC camps and fake NYSC certificates.
According to him, the scheme would ensure that its discharged certificates were not forged.
Adekanbi urged employers to always crosscheck the validity of the NYSC certificates tendered by the workers before employing them.
He also maintained that influential Nigerians, who tried to make their children evade the mandatory one-year service, were subjecting them to risk in the future because such children would not be eligible for employment or to contest election without the discharge certificate.
Ibeto said the NYSC scheme had assisted the state in the implementation of its education and health programmes through the provision of qualified manpower.
He also said the scheme had made Nigerians to know every part of the country. The acting governor added that the scheme had made youths to know the true situation on the ground in the states.
Source: The Nation
