Five Corps Members To Repeat Service Year In Lagos

Five corps members have been found wanting by the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Lagos State in the course of the service year and are to repeat the programme.

Mr Eddy Megwa, Coordinator, NYSC Lagos, made this known on Thursday in Lagos at the passing out of 1,188 corps members of the 2020 Batch B, Stream 2 deployed to the state.

The event which was observed on a low-key was held at the NYSC temporary orientation camp, Iyana Ipaja, Lagos.

Megwa, however, congratulated the outgoing corps members on successful completion of their service year and urged the corps members to make the best use of skill acquisition they acquired to make wealth and be employers of labour.

“This cream of Nigerian youths is exceptional and dedicated; 99 percent of them have proved to give in their best to the state and nation in the course of their service year.

“However, five of them violated the NYSC rules. Once we notice that a corps member is not available consecutively for three months, we declare he/she absconded and the punishment is repeat of service year.

“Two of them are guilty of the offence and we are going to remobilise them to that effect, while three others will have their service year extended by two to three months respectively.

“I am proud of other corps members, having selflessly committed and contributed to the socio-economic development of the local government areas, state and the nation at large.

“I urge them to continue to be great ambassadors of NYSC,” he said.

The coordinator noted that some of the corps members took advantage of the introductory lecture given to them on skill acquisition programmes during the orientation and continued after they passed out of the camp.

According to him, in our post-mortem review of their service, we found out that about 30 per cent of them are now into their own personal business and that is the idea behind the NYSC skill acquisition programmes in orientation camps.

“In as much as we encourage their employers to retain those that performed brilliantly well during service, we are glad that about 30 per cent of them are opening their own businesses.

“These ones are now going to be creating wealth and by extension be employers of labour and that is what the country needs today to improve development of the system.

“Everybody must not stick to government job, which is no longer easy to get. So we need to begin to use our hand create work and wealth.” Megwa said.

On the sideline, Abiola Yusuf, a member of the batch, in an interview with NAN, described her experience as wonderful, noting that the service year added more value to her life.

“The memories of my service year cannot be forgotten in a hurry. In spite of little challenges in settling down, it brought out a lot of opportunities to meet people and learn skill acquisition which I didn’t have.” she said.

Megwa said that the NYSC scheme had significantly instilled spirit of nationalism and unity among youths, saying that other countries of the world were copying from the scheme.