House to Reps to NYSC: Cancel postings of corps members to North-East

THE House of Representatives, yesterday, directed the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, to cancel all postings of corps members to states in the North East which are faced with security challenges.

This was sequel to the controversy that emanated from the posting of Batch B corps members, last Monday which resulted  in a protest by the corpers at the headquarters of the NYSC in Abuja. The affected corps members insisted that the authorities should redeploy them to safer areas in the country.

In its resolution on a motion moved by a member, Mr Peter Edeh, under matters of urgent public importance, the House also directed the NYSC to maintain the same  such stance until the security threats in the affected states had been satisfactorily addressed.

The House, however, asked corps members who opted to serve in the troubled states, to be allowed to do so.

Edeh, while moving the motion, had expressed concerns that it was on record that several corps members had lost their lives in these crisis-prone states in the past, adding that it would be unreasonable, therefore, to post members to the troubled states.

He further explained that the call for the cancellation of all corps members’ postings to the troubled states was further necessitated by the fact that corps members were ill-equipped and ill-trained to defend themselves in the face of unprovoked attack.

His contributions were supported by Minority Leader of the House, Femi Gabjabiamila, who argued that the notion that corps members must serve outside their states of origin was wrong, as according to him, framers of the NYSC Act did not envisage such threats to lives of innocent Nigerian youths.

He said where there was obvious security threat, there was nothing wrong to temporarily leave out crisis-prone areas in the posting of corps members.

However, Ahmed Kaita and Kyari Gujbawu who opposed the motion argued that it was not in tandem with the philosophy of the NYSC scheme.

According to Kaita, the action would defeat the purpose of the scheme but Gujbawu cautioned that if complied with, it would set a dangerous precedence, adding that the security agencies should rather be urged to step-up their operations to guarantee the security of the corps members when posted. When the question was put to vote by Deputy Speaker Emeka Ihedioha who presided over the session, members unanimously voted in favour of the motion.