18 NYSC members died on way to camp – Youth Minister

Eighteen intending members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) were last Tuesday killed in a road accident while travelling from Imo to Taraba state for their orientation exercise, the Minister of Youth Development, Bolaji Abdullahi said on Monday.

The minister said this during the flag off of the 2012 NYSC Batch A skills acquisition sensitization training programme in Abuja.

He said that the issue of resuming within twenty four hours after issuance of call up letters would no longer be the case. The minister therefore sought for the review of the camp resumption deadline.

“We will look into the review of the resumption time so that those to be mobilise will prepare and resume to the camp before closing of the camp without having to rush to meet up with the deadline. The exercise will start right from when final result of those to be mobilise is released from their various institutions,” Mr Abdullahi said.

He said that the federal government starting from the 2012 Batch A corps members, will start an agro business grant to support and train graduating corps members going into agriculture business.

“Federal government in collaboration with T.Y Danjuma foundation will be giving grant of between two to three million naira to corps members for agro business with the condition that the corper must go through a 14 days training programme and it must be in connection with another four to five corps members.”

The minister further reiterated the scheme’s plan to shut out oil companies, banks and National Assembly from posting corps members to serve there as well as stopping of preferential posting.

“As I earlier disclosed during the unveiling of the new NYSC policy, our corps members will only be posted to areas like agriculture, education, rural health and infrastructure in order to achieve some of the MDGs while corpers will only be posted preferentially based legitimately on marital, medical and disability ground, adding that anyone found wanting or lying about those grounds would be punished appropriately,” he said.