A pro-democracy non-governmental organization, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA), has granted a clean bill of health to the management of the National Youth Service Corps [NYSC], following its findings that there is no truth in the allegation that the management of the Scheme diverted N90 billion unspent funds and abetted ghost participants in the annual youth scheme.
The human rights group has accordingly noted that it had suspended its decision to drag the management of the NYSC before the coordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and other relevant anti-graft agencies over allegations of fraudulent practices brought against it by some concerned petitioners working in the NYSC.
A petition, it received, two weeks ago from some anonymous insiders in the NYSC, alleging fraud and corrupt practices in the scheme, sprung HURIWA into action when its team of investigators stormed Okonjo-Iweala’s office and the offices of anti-graft agencies to dig into the matter relying on the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FoI).
The group’s mission was specifically to establish the veracity, or otherwise, of allegations bordering on fraudulent diversion of N90 billion unspent funds by the management of the NYSC and the existence of a properly coordinated scheme which conceals the existence of ghost corps members in the yearly exercise.
In a statement by HURIWA’s national coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and Media affairs Director, Ms. Zainab Yusuf, the group said it had found out that the allegations were not true as it had shown evidence of refund of unspent funds by the current NYSC management.
The statement reads in part: “Following intense investigation and full disclosure of relevant facts and documentary evidence sighted by us, we can, for the time being, state without equivocation that we are unable to trace the existence of any ghost participants in the annual national youth service scheme run by the management of the NYSC.
“We approached the management of the NYSC in Abuja and we have since sighted some high profile authentic auditing information indicating that, in the last couple of years, some huge unspent funds were refunded to the coffers of the federation.”
Affirming that the group had not seen any trace of the existence of ghost participants in the programme based on the foregoing, it further argued: “we were also shown documentary evidence indicating that the participants are paid the correct feeding stipends as approved by the federal government of Nigeria.
“Except other superior information is made available to us, we can for the time being state that we have suspended our decision to so proceed with our mechanism of advocacy for a probe of these allegations.
“We will however continue to press ahead with our demand through the FOI for full disclosure to be made to us by way of documentary evidence and not just sighting of these official documents which were said to be classified,” the statement concluded.
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