President Muhammadu Buhari on Wednesday ruled out the possibility of scrapping the National Youth Service Corps as being suggested in some quarters. This was just as the NYSC management was considering the option of making the scheme voluntary in order to reduce the intake of corps members. There had been calls for the scrapping of the scheme since the outbreak of insurgency in parts of
the country. Insurgency had claimed the lives of some corps members in the northern parts of the country. Proponents of the scrapping of the scheme had been arguing that the NYSC had outlived its usefulness. But a statement by the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina, quoted Buhari as pledging that his administration would take all necessary actions to maintain and improve the scheme as a functional vehicle for the promotion of national unity and integration. Adesina said the President gave the assurance after receiving a briefing from officials of the Ministry of Youth Development led by the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Mrs. Rabi Jimeta. The President was said to have affirmed his confidence and trust in the programme, saying that the objective for which the scheme was established in 1973 was still very relevant for national development. “I firmly believe in the NYSC and I think it should remain a national programme to promote integration. “Whenever I go home to Daura, I look out for corps members from Lagos, Aba and other parts of the country. “I am always thrilled to learn that except for the NYSC, some of them have never left their states of origin to visit other cities in the country,” the President told the ministry’s officials. Jimeta told the President that the increasing number of NYSC participants posed a challenge to the scheme due to the dwindling revenue from the national budget to cater for their needs. She told the President that the annual enrolment of participants in the scheme had increased from 2,364 at inception in 1974 to 229,016 in 2014. “Given the increasing number of tertiary institutions, our projection is that the number of corps participants may rise to 300,000 by year 2020,’’ she said. Adesina also quoted the Director General of the NYSC, Brig.-Gen. Johnson Olawumi, as telling the President that there were plans to make the scheme
voluntary. This, he said, Adewunmi explained was meant to reduce the corps population in order to make the programme more sustainable.