Corps members besiege NYSC hqtrs

BY CALEB AYANSINA
ABUJA – PROSPECTIVE National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, members, yesterday, besieged the NYSC Directorate Headquarters in Abuja, seeking redeployment from volatile states in the northern part of the country.

“We prefer to die here instead of being killed by Boko Haram in the North,” were the words by corps members posted to some states like Yobe, Jos, Kaduna, Kano, Sokoto, Adamawa, Bauch and Borno.

The protesting corps members in their hundreds blocked entrance to the Gowon House in Abuja, preventing vehicles from going out or coming in, as all pleas by NYSC staff to report to their camp and commence redeployment process fell on deaf hear.

“I have started by camping here since last Friday. When I complete my three weeks orientation exercise, I will go back home if they don’t do any thing,” one of them told Vanguard, while another corps member said:  “Let them give us exemption letters, that is better than serving in Borno State.”

Vanguard gathered that most of the protesters were mainly from South-South, South-East and South-West, as they lamented that “even routes to the camps are more deadly than camp, we don’t know any short-cut. How many corpers from the North do you see among us, look at us very well, we are mainly Ibos and Yorubas.”

Meanwhile, Director of Mobilisation, Mrs Mercy Kolajo, told Vanguard that corps members have to report to camp first before they could talk of relocation, insisting that they could not carry out redeployment in the headquarters. She said only the state coordinators could do that after they might have filled the redeployment form.

According to her, “the 2012 Batch ‘B’ prospective corps members who have collected their call-up letters from their institutions should immediately proceed to their respective orientation camps for registration and camping exercise. Whoever is interested in seeking relocation should make a request for relocation while in camp.

“We appeal to parents to let their children go. They are going to be protected, if there is any challenge in the states they are posted to, NYSC knows what to do.”

Also, the Director of Public Relations, Mrs Abosede Aderibigbe, confirmed that any corps member who feels threatened has a right to apply for redeployment, maintaining that loitering around the headquarters will not assist any corps member.