Unqualified persons don’t participate in NYSC scheme — D-G

The Director-General, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brig.-Gen. Muhammad Fadah, says the scheme will not relent efforts in preventing unqualified persons from participating in the national service.

Fadah gave the assurance on Thursday in Abuja, at the opening of the 2022 Batch C Pre-Mobilisation Workshop.

The workshop with the theme: “Stemming Fraudulent Enlistment in the Mobilisation Process: Time for Drastic Action to Arrest the Menace.”

Fadah said he was concerned about the declining quality of graduates being presented for mobilisation for national service.

“During the 2022 Batch ‘B’ Streams One and Two Orientation programmes, field officers detected some Prospective Corps Members (PCM), especially those claiming to be foreign trained, with shocking inability to defend their supposed educational qualifications.

“Series of confessions were extracted from them, and these will hopefully assist us in carrying out further investigations.

“You will agree with me that there is the compelling need for school managers and other stakeholders in education to rise to the occasion and nip this problem in the bud,” he said.

This, he said, informed the choice of the theme of the workshop.

According to the Director-General, at the maiden meeting with Registrars of Corps Producing Institutions in Nigeria held in April, they made commitments to strengthen their institution’s data security.

“We expect that, amongst other steps, the institutions will always ensure that only credible officers are entrusted with the task of handling the data of their graduates being processed for mobilisation,” he added.

The Registrar, Joint Admissions Matriculation Board,(JAMB), Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, called on corps producing institutions to ensure that they follow laid down procedures to reduce mistakes in the mobilisation process.

He added that JAMB had also employed various measures to sanitise admission processes as some claimed that mistakes were made at that stage which affects them during mobilisation for NYSC.

“Such measures is the Central Admission Processing System (CAPS), an automated vehicle used for all admissions since its introduction during the 2017/2018 admissions exercise,” he said.

Oloyede said that the system had restored autonomy to the institutions with regards to admission process, ensured transparency and involvement of candidates in the admission process.

He, however, said that the current challenges experienced by the board includes menace of fraudsters defrauding candidates with illegal admissions and delay by institutions in processing genuine applications for service, leading to desperation by candidates.

Oloyede added that there were also attempts by students to compromise staff of the board and of institutions to be mobilised for national service.

He, however, said that JAMB had also diligently prosecuted officers forging or aiding and abetting forgery and other illegal activities.

The Director, Corps Mobilisation, Mrs Victoria Ango, said that previous pre-mobilisation workshops, had provided avenue for review of previous performances and in the process, brought new ideas to overcome observable challenges in the mobilisation process.

She also said that this had led to reduction in mobilisation of unqualified persons.

“The success should largely be attributed numerous innovations through enhanced level of collaboration with all stakeholders.

“A lot however needs to be done as we observe gaps in uploads, faking of academic credentials and many other acts of academic dishonesty.

“These little acts of deviance nonetheless, cannot vitiate the appreciable gains we have made in improving the mobilisation process.

“That justifies continued engagements with the hope that we shall surely attain desired level of excellence,” Ango said.