NYSC Rules Out Military Training For Corps Members

The corps moves to check forgery of certificates.
The National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, has ruled out military training for corps members, saying the armed forces would not be able to accommodate them after the training.
The scheme is also working out measures to check the increasing rate of the forgery of its certificate.
A member of the NYSC Governing Board, Tijani Adekanbi, who disclosed this in Minna, the Niger State capital, when he visited the state’s acting governor, Musa Ibeto, in his office, said the decision not to include one year military training in the scheme, was taken after a wide consultation.
Some Nigerians have in the recent past advocated military training for corps members to enable them grapple with the security challenges in some parts of the country.

“If we give them one year military training we have to absorb them into any of the services,” Mr. Adekanbi said. “If they are allowed to be on their own after the training it will be dangerous for the country.”
He said that that NYSC was currently working out a guideline to fine tune the Community Development (CD) service to discourage corps members from embarking on over-ambitious projects.
While appreciating the role of CD projects in the development of communities where they had been carried out, Mr. Adekanbi said under the proposed guidelines, projects would be scrutinized thoroughly by the NYSC secretariat before supporting them.
He urged employers of labour to be more vigilant and assist the scheme checkmate activities of operators of fake NYSC camps and Fake NYSC certificates.
He therefore asked employers of labour to always check the validity of the certificates tendered by their staff before promoting them.
Mr. Adekanbi warned influential Nigerians who were in the habit of discouraging their children from undergoing the one year service to stop doing so, saying they were merely subjecting them to risk in the future. According to him, those who skip the service would not be eligible to gain employment or contest election without the discharge certificate.

Responding, Mr. Ibeto said the NYSC scheme had assisted the state in the implementation of its education and health programmes in the area of the provision of qualified manpower.The deputy governor said the scheme made Nigerians, particularly the youth, to know more about different parts of the country.