On Thursday, the Senate directed the Federal Government to carry out a reorganisation of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, just as Senators lamented that the scheme was no longer fulfilling its mandate of entrenching national unity.
The directive was placed as aresult of a motion sponsored by Senator Sahabi Yau and 33 others. Senator Yau, while moving the motion, decried the subjection of Corps members to harsh conditions including poor pays and rejections by government organisations, which contradicts the purpose of the scheme.
He said: “This noble national programme has recently been buffeted by sundry challenges, including attacks on some of them. These heinous attacks on these youths are compounded by organisations that serially and unjustifiably reject them from undertaking their primary assignment under them.
Senators that contributed to the motion also lamented that the scheme had been abused by government and private agencies.
Senator Ahmed Lawan, in his contribution, called for a review of scheme.
Another Senator, who also called for review of the scheme lamented that the system was failing because of lack of proper coordination and planning. According to him, “It is almost criminal for government agencies to reject corps members. But the fact is that number of those being posted has gone up and the agencies are still the same. I think the problem is due to lack of proper coordination by the NYSC. They should be able to carry out periodic reviews to know the number of corps members that will be required by government agencies before posting.”
Before ruling on the motion, Senate President, David Mark lamenting that the Scheme has lost coordination, criticized prospective corps members who influence their postings to towns.
He added that such practice has led to the overcrowding of towns, thereby making most of the corps members redundant without place of primary assignments.
He said, “There are many corps members who will go and get posting letters without their parents. We are running into series of problems because of this and I believe that that the NYSC at the moment is bedeviled with lack of proper coordination.
“We need to go back to the drawing board and reorganize NYSC in such a way that it original intention of bringing national unity is achieved.”