Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr Solomon Dalong on Tuesday in Lagos lamented the rejection of corps members deployed to companies and parastatals for their mandatory service year. Just as he also suggested that quarterly orientation programme be adopted for corps members as against the one done every four months.
Dalong who spoke during the inspection of NYSC camp at Ipaja and at Surulere, Lagos said: “The rejection of corps members by both private and government organisations is highly regrettable.” He said that circulars have been sent to various organisations to accept corps members into their organizations because they are on national service.
Relating his experience he said: “One of the instances I met on ground here (Lagos) was that the corps member was irregularly rejected because she was not given a letter from the company to indicate that she was rejected. “Her deployment letter was officially stamped by Nigeria Port Authority without date after which they sent her back without explanation.”
According to him, organisations are suppose to accept this corps members and put them to use, adding that if the corps members have over stretch their facilities, they should write and indicate such in their correspondences and not to sent the corps member away without explanation. He maintained that Corps members should not be rejected on lack of good reasons.
The Minister who frowned at a situation where people choose to accept corps members based on certain erroneous sentiments said that many times, considerations are given to people based on who you know. ” This is against the spirit of the scheme itself,” he said. He explained that the scheme is intended to build confidence in Nigerians, to promote national integration and national unity adding, “when corps members are rejected based on certain consideration, it negates the fundamental principles of the scheme”
Meanwhile, the Minister also suggested to the director general, NYSC, General Johnson Olawumi that orientation camp should be quarterly. He explained that when the scheme was created, the initiator never took into consideration that there will come a time in Nigeria when the output of graduates will be far above the initial contemplation.
“Base on numbers of graduates every year, it is good we start thinking of how we will adopt a quarterly orientation programme. He said: “With the increase of tertiary institutions in Nigeria, if we do not adopt the quarterly orientation programme now, a time will come when the upsurge of graduates will over match the capacity.”
Speaking in the same vein, the Director General, NYSC, General Johnson Olawumi who was present at the occasion said he was pleased with the advice of the Minister, noting that he will work toward the actualisation of the initiative
