The bill to scrap out the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme, has passed the first reading in the House of Representatives. This follows the 2020 Federal Republic of Nigeria Alteration Bill.
The bill was sponsored by Hon. Awaji-Inombek Abiante, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lawmaker, Rivers state. He noted that one of the reasons the scheme should be scrapped is due incessant killing of innocent corps members in some parts of the country due to banditry, religious extremism and ethnic violence.
He noted further that “For children of the rich, how many of them would want to go to Sokoto or Yobe? It is still the children of the poor that are sent to those places (where) they are butchered,” he said.
Abiante stressed that NYSC “has failed to address the essence of its establishment while several reform efforts have also not yielded desired results.
The statement read: ‘’This bill seeks to repeal Section 315(5)(a) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) on the following grounds-incessant killing of innocent corps members in some parts of the country due to banditry, religious extremism and ethnic violence; incessant kidnapping of corps members across the country at their places of primary assignment and in transit.
“Public and private agencies and departments are no longer recruiting able and qualified Nigerian youths, thus relying heavily on the availability of corps members who are not being well remunerated, and get discarded with impunity at the end of their service year without any hope of being gainfully employed. Due to insecurity across the country, the NYSC management now gives considerations to posting corps members to their geopolitical zone, thus defeating one of the objectives on which the Corps was set up i.e. ‘developing common ties among the Nigerian youths and promote national unity and integration’.”
It is worthy to note that the NYSC scheme was set up in 1973 during the military regime of Gen Yakubu Gowon (Rtd) to reconcile and rebuild the country after the civil war.
Nigerians has since reacted to the issue of scrapping the scheme, see social media reactions
What is your take on the motion, are you for or against scrapping out the NYSC scheme?
