There Are Many NYSC Members Who Could Neither Read Nor Write: DG

The Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, Brigadier General Nnamdi Okore-Affia, yesterday said there were many corps members who could neither read nor write.

The DG, who made the disclosure at the opening of the 2013 Batch ‘A’ Pre-Mobilisation Workshop holding in Ilorin, Kwara State, however, promised that institutions producing half-baked graduates for NYSC would henceforth be sanctioned.

Okore-Affia, who painted a sordid picture of illiterate- graduates churned out by the universities and polytechnics, said this had culminated in mass rejection of corps members in their places of primary assignment.

He said: “We have corps members who can hardly communicate in English Language, let alone being able to teach in the classrooms. The level of academic deficiency among corps members has heightened corps members’ rejection and redundancy.

“This worrisome development has resulted in a situation whereby members of the public wrongly condemn the NYSC for the poor academic standard displayed by these corps members.”

Okore-Affia accused some Corps Producing Institutions, CPIs, of deliberately producing more graduates than their quota thereby making records unsuitable and causing problems for the directorate.

He said many of the ‘illiterate’ corps members are “graduates who ordinarily are either overaged, underwent part-time programmes or products of internally introduced unaccredited courses/programmes.”

According to him, some institutions extort money from their graduates before giving out call-up letters or include names of graduates on the master list.

As a way out, the DG said the national Universities Commission, NUC, the National Board for Technical Education, NBTE, and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, would henceforth be involved to identify erring institutions for appropriate sanctions