The National Youth Council of Nigeria (NYCN) has rejected the move to scrap the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme.
Daily Trust reports that a bill to amend the 1999 constitution where the NYSC scheme would be scraped is being prepared for second reading at the Federal House of Representatives.
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While addressing the press on the backdrop of the development, the NYCN Vice President, (North- Central), Ambassador Muhtar Akoshile noted that the move would do more harm than good.
Akoshile said the council was “shocked that the hallowed floor of the Federal House of Representatives of Nigeria would be weaponized to further play a parochial and divisionist agenda couched in the move to scrap the NYSC citing security challenges as the reason.
He said although there are security challenges in the country, he said it would be a gross disservice and an inhuman attack on one of the fabrics of the nation’s national unity.
According to him, “The call to scrap the NYSC scheme which serves as a transition year for many Nigerian youths, with the N33,000 allowance serving as a key financial stabilizer for many of these poor Nigerians, is a negative message to them that government doesn’t care about them.
“We are well aware that this move has been covertly sponsored by agents of destabilization, who have misguided the respected House of Representatives, which has in time past and on several occasions taken the side of the Nigerian masses even at a huge political cost.
“We hereby call on the leadership of the house, whom we well know to be person’s of integrity and burning passion to better the lot of Nigerians, to stop further action on this divisive bill that will only rob many Nigerians of the only government presence they know, not to talk of the social and understandable benefits the scheme has given over the decades.”
Akoshile said the NYCN has also passed a vote of credence in the continuous existence of the NYSC, its management and urged all stakeholders to support in ensuring that his vision for a crop of independent youth is realized.
He added that the council stands firmly in support of President Muhammadu Buhari, who has given more institutional and practical support to the Nigerian youth through different programmes.
