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By Amos Odhe, Yenagoa
The Bayelsa State coordinator of the National Youths Service Corps, Mrs. Okpalifo Obiageli Charity, has said the benefits of keeping the NYSC scheme outweighs the calls for its scrapping by some groups due to security challenges being experienced today in Nigeria.
Mrs. Okpalifo, who made this known during an interactive meeting with journalists in her office at the Goodluck Ebele Jonathan Federal Secretariat in Yenagoa, said that the issue of insecurity is not peculiar to NYSC, adding that the scheme is a training programme that prepare the youths for the challenges ahead.
Okpalifo said, “What of students in the school? So when they kidnap students, does it all the institutions should be closed? These are questions we have to ask ourselves. When it comes to NYSC, everybody is shouting without knowing what the NYSC has done for the nation.
“Imagine students coming out from school and you just throw them out to the society. Do you know how it will be? By the time they finish spending that one year and come back, there thinking will change automatically. It is a kind of transition, we are building youths and it is not even easy.
“They should commend the scheme because in as much as there may be lapses here and there, it doesn’t mean you should throw the child with the bath water. We feel it, the government they feel it. See the whole country now how it is, do we shot down Nigeria because there is insecurity?
“We are not involving in that security issue. We restrict ourselves to the administrative job we are doing. Left for me, it is not because of what is happening that some persons will say we scrap out NYSC because the benefits outweigh the challenges we are facing now.”
The state coordinator solicited for partnership with the media on the NYSC quarterly programme called Health Initiative for Rural Dwellers especially in Bayelsa State, adding that the corps medical personnel have so far visited some communities like Sampuo, Ekpetiama and others.
“We have a health initiative for rural dwellers. Our corps medical personnel on quarterly bases move from one community to another, giving health care delivery free of charge.
“What they need is support like drugs and some other things that will help them from one locality to another. So these are the things that people don’t know, they just see Corpers going up and down, they don’t know what they are contributing to the society where they are serving.
“Ours is to supply human resources- the corps members, medical personnel, pharmacists and nurses. The sourcing of drugs is from the public. It is when we get enough that we schedule where to go”, Okpalifo stated.
According to the coordinator, the state government has been helping the scheme in terms of regular payment of allowances and the lodges they had built for Corps members.
“Almost all the communities and local government areas have Corpers’ lodge. If they are finally leaving the service year, government still pay them money as transport to go home”, she said.