President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday
ruled out the possibility of scrapping the National Youth Service Corps
as being suggested in some quarters.
This was just as the NYSC management was
considering the option of making the scheme voluntary in order to reduce
the intake of corps members.
There had been calls for the scrapping of the scheme since the outbreak of insurgency in parts of the country.
Insurgency had claimed the lives of some corps members in the northern parts of the country.
Proponents of the scrapping of the scheme had been arguing that the NYSC had outlived its usefulness.
But a statement by the Special Adviser to
the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, quoted Buhari
as pledging that his administration would take all necessary actions to
maintain and improve the scheme as a functional vehicle for the
promotion of national unity and integration.
Adesina
said the President gave the assurance after receiving a briefing from
officials of the Ministry of Youth Development led by the Permanent
Secretary of the ministry, Mrs. Rabi Jimeta.
The President was said to have affirmed
his confidence and trust in the programme, saying that the objective for
which the scheme was established in 1973 was still very relevant for
national development.
“I firmly believe in the NYSC and I think it should remain a national programme to promote integration.
“Whenever I go home to Daura, I look out for corps members from Lagos, Aba and other parts of the country.
“I am always thrilled to learn that
except for the NYSC, some of them have never left their states of origin
to visit other cities in the country,” the President told the
ministry’s officials.
Jimeta told the President that the
increasing number of NYSC participants posed a challenge to the scheme
due to the dwindling revenue from the national budget to cater for their
needs.
She told the President that the annual
enrolment of participants in the scheme had increased from 2,364 at
inception in 1974 to 229,016 in 2014.
“Given the increasing number of tertiary
institutions, our projection is that the number of corps participants
may rise to 300,000 by year 2020,’’ she said.
Adesina also quoted the Director General
of the NYSC, Brig.-Gen. Johnson Olawumi, as telling the President that
there were plans to make the scheme voluntary.
This, he said, Adewunmi explained was meant to reduce the corps population in order to make the programme more sustainable.
0 comments:
Post a Comment