By Favour Nnabugwu
The National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, has warned instutions against mobilisation of unqualified graduates for national service.
The NYSC Director-General, Major General Shuaibu Ibrahim, gave the fresh warning during the maiden retreat of NYSC Management with Registrars of Corps Producing Institutions in Nigeria on Tuesday in Abuja.
He noted that the retreat was convened to seek ways of eliminating flaws in the NYSC Mobilisation process, adding that the Scheme is now determined more than ever before to plug all the loopholes.
Ibrahim said, “Gaps have already been identified with a number of resolutions reached on how to eradicate recurrent challenges, but implementation has remained elusive.
“There are 2,955 active Corps Producing Institutions on the NYSC data base, out of which only 320 are home-based.
“In schools where Registrars have abdicated their roles to subordinate officers, we have seen various forms of abuses and shortfalls. This has given rise to occasional mobilisation of unqualified persons, many of whom have been detected by NYSC field officers.”
In the same vein, the registrar, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, urged the NYSC to rely only the matriculation lists provided by Central Admission Processing Systems (CAPS) for the mobilisation of Corps Members.
He lamented the situation where some universities in the country running “top-up” degree programme, which usually runs for a period of one or two academic years or two semesters depending without the knowledge of the National Universities Commission (NUC) and other regulatory bodies.
He charged the registrars to help the board in ensuring that illegal admissions and other irregularities are eliminated in the Universities, saying that no body can be admitted in the university with the knowledge of registrars
He said, “All these are aimed at stopping the illegal mobilisation. I want to urge you to please stop this. I therefore, call on NYSC to rely on matriculation lists provided by CAPS for mobilisation.
“Institutions should also confess their sins and say these are the illegally admitted students. We found out that about 25 percentage of these illegally admitted are part-time and sandwich students that have been impeded in the candidates that are for regular programmes.”
