A youth pressure group, Advocate for Collective Transformation, ACT, yesterday insisted that prospective National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, members must receive their call-up letters free from any medium, saying NYSC has no justification for monetizing its online registration platform.
ACT in a statement signed by its President, Tayo Fashogbon and National Secretary, Isaac Ifetoluwa Ajayi said the fees negate the higher call to national duty.
The youth group said it was not against the introduction of online registrations for prospective corps members, but forcing Nigerian graduates to pay in any all means before serving their own country.
“We are surprise that an agency like NYSC that is not saddled to generate fund will be monetizing its core duty to Nigerian graduates.”
ACT however issued a two-week ultimatum to the NYSC management to reverse the fee and declare it free for all prospective corps members.
“We, as a youth movement, give NYSC two weeks ultimatum to reverse this unexplainable exploitative fees or face massive protests across the country,” ACT said. “We declare every justification of this act from NYSC invalid and immediately call on the Minister for Youth Affairs and Chairman, NYSC governing board to stop the N4, 000 financial burden NYSC intend to inflict on these patriotic youths of average and poor parents that had paid years of school fees and other bills through their noses.
“On behalf of Nigerian youths, we reject in totality this extortion of fresh graduates who are going on a compulsory and rigorous voluntary service of the nation,” ACT said.
The group insisted that as good as the policy will removed bottleneck faced by fresh graduates during registration, NYSC as a well funded scheme of the federal government has no justification for requesting money from jobless graduates.
“Most of these fresh graduates probably have not earned N4,000 since they left school and this baseless levy coupled with other factors such as insecurity, accident prone roads, will definitely discourage many from contributing their skilled and services during their national service year.
“Nothing is said about serious agitation for the increment of Corps members’ transportation allowance to camp; from Lagos to Sokoto, Taraba to Akwa Ibom all earn N1,500. But NYSC as a government agency believes it’s reasonable to impose N4, 000 on these Young minds, who are just bheaving a sigh of relief from the heavy burden of school fees and other costs, just to serve their mother and fatherland.
“NYSC should remember that prospective corps members are freely donating their highly skilled services as required by Law, for which the Government, community and institutions demonstrate gratitude through a stipend to aid daily living only,” the statement affirmed.
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