NYSC bans Benue varsity graduates from national service

The Management of the Benue State University (BSU), Makurdi, is investigating the challenges that led to the banning of prospective corps members from the institution from being mobilised for the mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).

The Vice Chancellor (VC) of the institution, Prof. Msugh Kembe, disclosed this to newsmen on Wednesday in Makurdi.

The VC said the institution was shocked at the decision of the NYSC to prevent it from mobilising its prospective corps members for service.

”The NYSC did not inform the management of the institution of its decision before executing it. The organisation did not inform us that it had issues with the current list of prospective corps members from our university.

”On the second of October this year, the Dean of Students reported to me that they could not upload the names of prospective corps members from the university on the NYSC portal.

”The management of the university then detailed the Liaison Officer to write a letter to find out why the university could not upload its list of prospective corps members on the NYSC portal.

“We just got a reply of the letter just few minutes ago, but we are doing our investigation to find out whether the fault is from the JAMB, NYSC or the university. But I assure you that if the problem is from our school we will fish out the culprits and sanction them.

“We have the best forensic expert in the whole of the country from this university and we are going to engage his services to find out those behind this.

”I wonder why the NYSC did not fish out the culprits and sanction them, rather it decided to come down heavily against the whole university.

Our correspondent reports that the prospective corps members from the BSU and other higher institutions in the state had been banned by the NYSC from partaking in the compulsory youths service programme on allegation of falsification of age and other sundry reasons.

The situation resulted to protest by the prospective corps members who besieged the State Secretariat of the NYSC calling for the body to reverse its decision.

The protesters, who were visibly angry, also threatened to close down the NYSC Orientation Camp at Wannune, Tarka Local Government Area (LGA) of the state, if the decision was not reversed

The NYSC State Coordinator, Mrs Awakessien Eno, said that the corps discovered Student Officers fielded names of over aged students or names of students that read courses that were excluded from NYSC mobilisation.

According to her, the students affairs had colluded with some students who were quite ambitious and wanted to serve at all cost and registered them for service.

”An audit was carried out in most of the institutions nationwide and eventually six major institutions were affected and many of them are actually from Benue State.

“The audit report has been sent to the affected schools and the schools are aware of what exactly is expected of them,” she said.