By Caleb Ayansina

FOR the past 41 years of its existence, the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has handled the mobilization of graduates across the country for the mandatory one year national youth service through analogue method, which is replete with all sorts of irregularities.

This has, no doubt, exposed the scheme to criticism.  The development, according to the NYSC Director General, Brig-General Johnson Olawumi, informed the management to embrace the computerization of the scheme’s activities.

“The NYSC of today is a national service institution that needs to operate in line with the dynamics of the 21st century”, Olawumi stated.

File photo: The NYSC Batch ‘B’ Corps Members At Their Passing -Out Parade At Murtala Muhammed Square, Kaduna on Thursday. Photo by Olu Ajayi

“With the computerization process of mobilization of corps members, there will be sanity in the entire process. It will eliminate mobilization of non-qualified persons, lack of proper record of mobilized persons.”
The NYSC boss added that issues of service evasion and  complaints of non-payment of allowance by corps members would equally be addressed.

He said; “One thing we do not anticipate before and which this online mobilization process has brought out clearly is the fact that we are now going to eliminate all those sharp practices by corps producing institutions that forward names of those who are not eligible”.
The project was in partnership with a private company, Messr SIDMACH Technologies Nigeria Limited.

The DG explained that the company would build ICT infrastructure centre in all the states orientation camps, which would be linked to the one at the NYSC headquarters in Abuja.

On the N4,000 online identity database charges on prospective corps members, Olawumi said it was for services and infrastructure to be deployed by the collaborating firm.
He clarified that the money was neither for the scheme nor the corps producing institutions as it was being alleged in some quarters.

Also, the Director of Mobilisation, NYSC, Mr Anthony Ani, said the centres to be built would enable corps members to complete their registration even at their local government areas, thereby removing all costs associated with travelling several times for  registration in their schools.

Ani said the computerization process would enable the NYSC to create an IT-database from which every information about corps members could be accessed by them, organisations, institutions and agencies that might want to make enquiries about participants in the scheme.

He explained that the project would curb the latent abuses that had been identified by the management of corps members and tertiary institutions in their efforts to circumvent  the admission and courses criteria set by JAMB, NUC and NBTE.

The NYSC chief hinted that the project would also help the management to solve the challenges of manual documentation of the scheme, particularly those associated with tracing files of corps members that had participated in the compulsory scheme over the past 41 years.

According to him, even when some sections of the public believed the charges were too much, the facts are that, it is not an imposition on any corps member, as the choice of exploring the benefits of the innovative registration and documentation identity platform is still optional for corps members.

Ani said: “It was through the analysis that those who verified the project that the N4,000 was chosen. The management of the NYSC is not unaware of the fact that anything that is new is always controversial because change is not an easy thing.

“So, for people to go to this platform we give an option. And what is the option? If you do not want to enjoy the benefits the platform will give, you don’t need to pay.

“What are the benefits the platform is offering? Number one, you go to the platform at the time your Senate will bring the approved list, by the time we see it, you will be informed whether you are mobilizable or not. What do I mean by being mobilizable or not? We found that through our collaboration with NUC, NBTE and JAMB that there were some institutions that are admitting students for non-accredited courses.

“We also found out that some institutions were admitting students without passing through JAMB. Some they pass through JAMB but they admitted people without the national cut-off mark and these among others were the problems we saw, and they need to be addressed.”