The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has provided an explanation for how an undercover journalist abused its system to be reactivated into the program even after completing their 2019 service.
Reporter Audu Umar described how, despite having served earlier, he was able to complete a four-year degree in less than two months and subsequently became eligible for the NYSC program.
The NYSC spokesman, Eddy Megwa, clarified that the reporter circumvented the system by using multiple phone lines a few days after the article went viral.
“It is not that we don’t have checks and balances in place to detect possible breaches of the system. When the undercover reporter first put in his data, the system rejected him because he had served in the scheme before. He later changed his email address and his phone number which made the system to accept him. And he was initially posted to Osun State,” he said on Thursday’s edition of Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily.
“He did that because he was out for a particular purpose. We are looking at the situation and ensure that it does not happen again. We don’t have a database of graduates to serve in the scheme. We only rely on the lists sent to us by the senates of the various universities stating the number of graduates to expect from them”.
The NYSC official responded, “We have resorted to inviting foreign students and giving them tests to know their abilities,” when asked how the organization can prevent such incidents in the future. “It is not our duty to assess their certificates.”
“In the course of doing that, we have made startling discoveries. Ask some of them to write a simple essay, you will be surprised at what you get. I have some of such materials that I can show you. NYSC is an elite scheme, not for illiterates and the means of communication is English Language.
“In 2006, the then DG of NYSC, Brig.- Gen. Yusuf Momoh, went to an orientation camp and asked a supposed corps member the title of his final project, the answer he gave was incredulous, and further investigation revealed that his name was smuggled into the list of graduates from a particular university.”