by Isi Esene

The new posting policy proposed by the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) which seeks to post corps members only to four key sectors of the economy namely; agriculture, education, health, and infrastructure appears not to be going as planned with the rejection of many corps members in these sectors.

Mr. Frank Ekpunobi, the FCT NYSC Coordinator confirmed there has been a slight adjustment to the policy promising that the revised policy will be made public in due time.

Ekpunobi explained that the scope of posting has been widened which explains the posting of the batch ‘B’ corps members.

It was observed that the batch ‘B’ corps members who recently completed their orientation exercise were posted to sectors outside these proposed key areas, an action which contradicts the change in policy made public by the NYSC director general, Brig.-Gen. Nnamdi Okorie-Affia earlier in the year.

He announced a policy which restricts the posting of corps members with a view to addressing challenges in critical sectors of the economy in need of additional personnel.

The policy which was supposed to take effect with the batch ‘A’ corps members is aimed at enhancing equitable distribution of corps and re-energizing the objectives of the scheme.

According to Leadership Newspaper investigation, the apparent lack of adherence to this policy is due to the mass rejection of corps members by government agencies and ministries who claimed they could not bear the financial burden of admitting additional personnel.

Mr. Peter Atilola, who is the deputy director of Publication at the NYSC Headquarters, however denied Ekpunobi’s submission, insisting that the policy announced by Okorie-Affia still subsists adding that the scheme doesn’t plan to breach the policy.

Many stakeholders have argued against the relevance of the NYSC scheme to national development and have on several occasions called for its scrapping, a position which has been strongly resisted by the government.