Adamawa, Yobe, Borno Are No-Go Areas For Corps Members, Says Director-General
The Director General of the National Youth Service Corps, Brigadier -General Johnson Olawumi, has said that the Federal Government has stopped posting corps members to the troubled three states in the North-East which are under a state of emergency rule. They are Adamawa, Yobe and Borno.
Olawumi who spoke today in Abuja when he appeared before members of the Committee on Civil Society, Labour, Youths and Sports of the national conference said that the agency has taken a decision not to send any corps member to the three affected states unless the request to be posted to any of the states comes from the corps members.
“We have stopped sending corps members to the three troubled states in North-East under emergency rule. Surprisingly, some still demand to be posted there would get posted there. But nobody is forced to go there.”
He said that there is no way the agency would stop those demanding to be posted there, adding that the embargo on the three states would continue until security improved there.
Olawumi also spoke on areas the agency is making use in order to make the corps members self reliance after their one year service.
This, he said, included skills acquisition and entrepreneurship development programme which he said had been established in all states and Abuja to train corps members.
He said that many corps members have benefitted from that programme and that this has made them to rather than becoming job seekers after the one year service, they have actually became job creators.
The DG also said the commission was considering setting up youth empowerment fund where skilled corps members would be able to draw after they must have finished their service years.
“What we are looking at is to have a pool where those corps members who have acquired one skill or the other while in camp and throughout the service year will write a business proposal, which we will look at and if we find it suitable, refer such a corps member to the administrators of that fold that they can advance on loan.
“Such a loan if it is approved will be interest free and there will be no issue of bringing collateral, since the corps member is just passing out, we hold the discharge certificate as collateral.
“We have tried that under the MDG, War against Poverty Programme and seen hundred per cent response by corps members to payment of loans given to them.”
He said the agency was already planning to expand its coast by posting corps members to oil companies and banks, an action he said was not part of the policy of the NYSC before.
He said that by government policy only allow them “to deploy (corps) members to four key areas, which are health, education, agriculture and rural development.
“Over time we found out that when we post corps members to these areas, we still have some that do not have places for their primary assignment.
“We are looking at expanding it beyond this four to places like oil industry, the banking sector, the telecommunication industries but in doing this, we might need to put some regulations in place so that corps members are not used and dumped as it was done sometimes in the pas by banks.
President Goodluck Jonathan is still not comfortable with what is termed as “distortions” in the 2014 national budget, leading to continued delay in his ascending his signature to it, five months into the year.
Night Has Fallen On Nigeria, By Charles Ofoji
For Nigerian leaders, political power serves only one purpose – it is a self-serving instrument for self aggrandisement. Little wonder, political power in Africa’s most populous country has churned out thousands of overnight billionaires, at the expense of a choking populace.
When the late Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria, Chukwudifu Oputa JSC was delivering his judgement sometime in the 80s in the famous Johnson case, referring to the unfair treatment meted out to the foreign partner by his Nigerian partners, the then “Socrates” of the Apex Court compared the case to a hungry poultry, where each chicken was eager to grab as much grain as it could, not minding in the struggle which chicken was hurt. Oputa concluded by saying that it was unworthy of gentlemen.
That statement he made then paints a true picture of Nigeria of our time. For Nigerian leaders, public office is a rat race of pilfering the commonwealth without giving a damm about what happens to the common man. As they crazily looted the treasury, they did not pause to ponder. Also what they foolishly failed to ponder while they were milking the cow called Nigeria dry, was what kind of a country would they live in with their ill-gotten wealth amidst artificially created hunger and poverty?
The chickens have come home to roost. Nigeria, as it is today – an impoverished and severely unsafe country – is the end product of the foolishness of the Nigerian elite. Depraved corruption is the cause of all the troubles we have in present day Nigeria, including the Boko Haram insurgency.
If Nigerians had enjoyed 20% of the benefits normally meant for citizens of the world’s 7th largest producer of crude oil, there would have been no Boko Haram. Because the people would have a good life and would have no time for extremist thoughts. About three hundred of our girls of the future generation would also not have been kidnapped and Nigeria would not be getting the very bad press it is getting at the moment due to the missing Chibok girls.
Amnesty International last week chastised the Nigerian Military for failing to respond to early information it got about plans by the terror group, Boko Haram to attack the Chibok School. This has been vehemently denied by the Military, although two conflicting responses emerged from the Defence Headquarters.
Surely the military is guilty of both not doing enough to prevent the raid and not doing much to bring back the girls, as angrily demanded by an outraged populace and the international community. However, what this writer fails to understand is why Nigerians could not understand that we lack an army which is capable of dealing with this insurgency, no thanks to corruption.
As a result of idiotic corruption, the defence budget has been seen, over the years, as a big cake to be shared by the top military brass and their political collaborators. This is why we have a ragtag army and this is why our military cannot deal with the threat of Boko Haram without international help, not withstanding the trillions of Naira that has gone down the drain-pipe called defence.
The Nation is told that huge amount of military personnel has been deployed to the North-East to face the insurgency. Good talk. But no one cares to ask if adequate logistics have been put in place. The United States of America, for example, do not send troops anywhere without first setting up a make-shift camp, which would have grocery store, clinic, laundry, cafeteria, sport facilities etc.
But the Nigeria Army sends its troops in harm’s way without caring for their welfare and safety. It is useless to talk about lack of adequate compensation for the families of soldiers who fall in serving their fatherland. Yet, Nigerians expect too much from our soldiers. Because they know that if they died in service, their families will suffer, this is why they chicken out when they are expected to provide security.
If not for corruption, Chibok would have been a flourishing town with good policing and good communications network. It would have been impossible for any group to take away such number of girls in lorries. Those girls suffered the fate they suffered due to a ravenous elite, whose greed left Nigeria a skeleton of a nation. It is very sad.
Even if President Jonathan, now with international military help, finds and brings them back as he promised (and as Nigerians legitimately expect), those girls’ lives may never be the same again. It must be a hell of ordeal for them to be held captive by a brutal terror group.
Nigeria is cursed by new generation leaders, who think that leadership is a jamboree. They were forced down on the nation by a corrupt military. They are emergency leaders, with 90% of them not even prepared for leadership. Our leaders don’t care about the masses; neither do they care about their country. This has now turned out to be their nemesis. The Igbos say that a sheep that foolishly urinated on where it would sleep will stand when the night falls.
The night has fallen on our dear country. The darkness is intense. Due to corruption, Nigeria is now a pariah state, where there is no security to lives and property. The military is not to blame. I hold the political class responsible for all our troubles.
Those missing girls maybe found and brought back. Boko Haram maybe defeated one day. When this happens, then we will realise that our problem is not just Boko Haram and a helpless military that could not fight them. 85% of our employable youths are unemployed. And they have no hope of finding work. There would be plenty to agitate for in the years ahead. Other militant groups would crop up.
Ultimately, our unwise leaders would have no hiding place. If they think that they will get away with the injustice they meted out to their fellow countrymen and women, they had better check through history again. In post Boko Haram Nigeria, the leaders will ultimately be held to account for stealing the dreams and twisting the destiny of a people.