NYSC: Post Graduate Students, Pregnant Women, Nursing Mothers Bar From Service

The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has come hard on pregnant women, nursing mothers and students undergoing postgraduate programmes.
These group of people have been banned from enrolling in the national service across the country until they are free and fit to
participate in the scheme.

This decision was arrived at during the end of a two-day pre-mobilisation workshop organised for the 2015 Batch “B” NYSC programme, held in Kaduna.

The Director-General of the NYSC, Brig-Gen. Johnson Olawumi, defending its stand on this issue, said the exemption of pregnant women and nursing mothers, as well as post-graduate students from national service was because they would not be able to undertake the four cardinal programmes of the NYSC.

The NYSC four cardinal programmes include mobilisation, orientation, primary assignment and winding-up passing out parade.

In the statement, the NYSC explained that pregnant women and children would no longer be allowed into orientation camps across the country for service.

Arguing that prospective corps members must go through the four stages of national service to qualify to receive certificate of national service, Olawumi faulted a situation whereby prospective corps members, especially pregnant women and nursing mothers, would be absent from the stages of the national service, only to resurface for posting to their various places of primary assignments.

Meanwhile, the resolution workshop tagged: “ICT and NYSC Mobilization Process: Towards Eliminating Identified Challenges,” added that henceforth, documents for concessional posting request on marital or health grounds would be forwarded on-line as against the old practice of “bringing such to the NYSC headquarters in Abuja.”

It noted that prospective corps members would henceforth be given the opportunity to choose their choice outside their socio-cultural and linguistic areas, using ICT solution.

This, according to the NYSC, is in a bid to tackle the problems of deluge of concessional request with which the scheme is inundated with regularly.

The two-day pre-mobilisation workshop organised for the 2015 Batch “B” NYSC programme, in Kaduna started yesterday and it was declared open by the representative of Kaduna State governor Mallam Nasiru El-Rufai, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Youths and Sports, Alhaji Ibrahim Balarabe-Musa.

The National Youth Service Corps scheme was established by the Gen. Yakubu Gowon administration in 1973.