House of Representatives is considering a bill seeking to scrap National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme, it has emerged.
Military regime of General Yakubu Gowon established NYSC on May 22, 1973, under Decree No. 24 of 1973 as a way of reconciling and reintegrating Nigerians after the civil war between July 6, 1967 and January 15, 1970.
However, Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Alteration Bill, 2020, which is seeking to repeal the NYSC Act, is billed for the second reading.
The sponsor of the bill, Mr Awaji-Inombek Abiante, in the explanatory memorandum of the proposal, listed the various reasons why the NYSC should be scrapped.
It reads in part;
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:
The bill, which has passed first reading, was sponsored by Awaji-Inombek Abiante, a Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lawmaker from Rivers state.
Abiante said the scheme has failed to achieve its intended purpose and therefore should be discontinued.
He also expressed that the scheme has led to the untimely death of some corps members who were posted to areas with serious security threats.
The rep stated:
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.
In his explanatory memorandum of the bill, the lawmaker argued that the NYSC “has failed to address the essence of its establishment while several reforms efforts have also not yielded desired results.”
He said:
Incessant killing of innocent corps members in some parts of the country due to banditry, religious extremism and ethnic violence; incessant kidnapping of innocent 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.
The lawmaker added;
Apart from serving in their various places of primary assignment, corps members are often deployed for key assignments such as working as ad hoc electoral staff during elections.
However, some of them have either been killed or endangered in the line of duty.
In 2016, a corps member was killed during an election in Rivers state, while many of them were exposed to harm during the 2019 elections.
