We can only cater for 86,000 corps members – NYSC

The Director General of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brig-Gen, Suleiman Zakari Kazaure has said that the current scheme’s current budget can only take care of 86,000 corps members for now out of the 170,000 awaiting call-up.

The Director General stated this on Wednesday during a media parley in Abuja. He however said that the remaining 84,000 would be called up in January for stream two as “the Federal Government has directed the Scheme to mobilize every eligible member” who would miss their call-up batch, which has now been divided into stream one and two respectively.

The scheme according to the NYSC boss, supposed to be a collective responsibilities of the three tiers of government but has been left for the Federal Government alone.

This has impeded on the prospect of smooth operation of the scheme as the states and local governments have buckled under the weight of paucity of fund, Kazuare said.

He explains: “It is pertinent to state that the NYSC Act has clearly stated the responsibilities of all three tiers of government in the operations of the Scheme.

In as much as the Federal Government takes The lion share, the provision of orientation camp facilities, post-camp accommodation and transport of corps members, logistics support for inspection of corps locations material support for community development service and security of corps members are the responsibilities of the states and local governments.

“However, most of the states and local governments do not live up to these responsibilities in the erroneous assumption that the NYSC is a project of the federal government alone.

“This attitude is most glaring in the limited capacity and quality of facilities in most orientation camps across the country, hence our inability to accommodate more than seventy-eight prospective corps members in one orientation course.

I therefore use this medium to appeal to the states and local governments who are not discharging their statutory responsibilities to reconsider their stance and support the scheme in the effective mentoring of the future leaders of Nigeria.”

For some times now, “the NYSC has been in the news over it’s presumed inability to mobilize all qualified prospective corps members for the batch ‘B’ service year. As much as there is always public interest in the affairs of the scheme there is the need to put the facts in their right perspective and clear the lingering doubts.

The NYSC is prepare as always to mobilize all qualified graduates for the next service batch. However, it must be emphasized that as a budget-dependent Organisation, the scope of our activities is facing financial constraints like very other government agency in the present recession.

In the 2016 budget, provision was made for the mobilization of a total of two hundred and ten thousand corps members.

However, the figure for both 2016 batch A and batch B has more than doubled the original projection. Like we dido before the 2016 batch A orientation course, e have appealed to the government for special intervention grant to mop up excess of this figure.

So far we have received the green light from the relevant government agencies to prepare for the mobilization of all qualified prospective corps members. However the limited cumulative capacity of the orientation camps nationwide necessitates a second stream orientation course for the 2016 batch B which is being planned for January.