The lingering security challenges in the Northeast region is taking a heavy emotional toll on parents and guardians of serving and incoming corps members, as many have appealed to the management of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, Scheme to redeploy them to more secure and peaceful states.

Expressing great fears over the safety of their children in the volatile region, they have also pleaded with the Federal Government to save the young Nigerians from being killed by terrorists. However, the NYSC appears to be unrelenting in its resolve to deploy corps members to troubled states in the far North for the one-year mandatory national service.

Investigations revealed that no fewer than 7,846 corps members mobilised to the six states in the Northeast are currently undergoing the 2021 Batch B, Stream I, orientation course amid lingering security concerns that have led to the murder of at least 163 civilians by Boko Haram/ISWAP insurgents between January and June this year. At the onset of the Boko Haram insurgency, the management of the NYSC had taken the decision to suspend the posting and conduct of orientation programme in affected states in the region.

But the NYSC management came under pressure from governments of the affected states for the return of the posting and hosting of the orientation of the corps members in their domains. However, investigation revealed that while some governors took the NYSC management up and demanded the immediate return of the scheme’s activities in their states, the NYSC resumed the posting of corps members to the troubled region, albeit with the three-week orientation exercise conducted in more peaceful states.

Some parents while insisting that the NYSC partners effectively with the security agencies on the safety of prospective corps members and corps members, it has often turned down the applications for relocation of their wards to relatively safer states. But with the continued Boko-Haram/ISWAP attacks, even on security formations in the Northeast, the parents are still left to worry over the safety of their children serving in the region.

However, top sources in NYSC claim there is more to the numerous requests from parents for the relocation of their wards from the Northeast than security threats. NYSC officials who spoke in Abuja, said many of those requests for relocation have to do with seeking, in other parts of the country, undue economic opportunities and advantages for their wards.

In a chat, a top official at the national directorate of the scheme, who chose to speak on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the matter said, “The major problem when corps members who are deployed to serve the nation in states or communities other than their own, is the relentless lobbying by parents, especially those privileged in the society, for their children and wards to serve in selected states, urban areas and places where the corps members would find contacts to secure jobs after their national service.

“It usually has little or nothing to do with security threat because we have strong collaboration with the intelligence agencies who provide updates on the security and safety of corps members wherever they are posted for service in the country. We also provide the corps members with regular security advisory,” the source said.

A parent, Mrs Florence Agudiegwu, who is a businesswoman, said the NYSC failed to process her daughter’s request for relocation from Borno State on the grounds of insecurity, a situation that forced her daughter to remain at home for about two months.

She said, “My daughter is willing to serve the country, but we are not ready to risk her life in order to do so. For over one month, the NYSC could not process the request; there was no communication from the scheme. We became worried and frustrated to the point that we had to start calling the people we know. Eventually, a relative in Lagos spoke to a top NYSC official who eventually revealed that relocation has been temporarily suspended.”

Agudiegwu wondered why she would labour to see her daughter through school and still needed to be subjected to enormous stress in a bid to get her to serve the nation in safety.

Another parent, Mrs Mary Effiong, whose son is a foreign trained economist, said she had also been experiencing what she described as “deep frustration” to get him redeployed from Adamawa State to Ogun State.

Effiong, a widow, said her son who is 22, suffers from sickle cell anemia and is also finding it difficult to cope with his national service due to the same difficulty in securing redeployment to a state closer home.

She said, “My son has put in his application for redeployment online on health grounds. It was initially approved, but two days later, it was cancelled and his account became suspended. We kept checking his portal dashboard almost every two days to know if the initial approval would be restored since June but up till August 14, there was no success. There was a day I wept openly in the market because the calls I was getting from my son was affecting me psychologically.”

Mrs. Effiong appeal to the Federal Government to intervene in the matter

A corps member, simply identified as Funmilayo, said the stress and delay associated with getting the approval for her redeployment from Yobe to Abuja after about three months since she applied was demoralising.

“As we speak, I am still a Yobe ‘corper’, but I am not really happy here because every other day, we hear stories of attacks in nearby villages where most of us are posted to serve as teachers or health workers.”

Asked if she receives regular advisory from the scheme, she said: “Only those in the state capital (Damaturu) enjoy relative safety and security.”

(Vanguard)

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