The Director General of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, Brigadier General Y.D. Ahmed, has admonished corps members to impact positively on the people in their host communities and places of primary assignment.
The Director General gave the admonition at the NYSC Permanent Orientation Camp, Ikare-Akoko, where he addressed the 2024 Batch ‘C’ (Stream 1) corps members deployed to Ondo State.
Ahmed encouraged the members of the service corps to add values to the lives of people during the service year, saying that the society expected much from them.
Ahmed, who charged them to be focused and plan their lives in a manner that will make them useful to the society and country at large urged them to shun all vices that might truncate their future or distract them from attaining what they had planned for their lives, while also adding that they should not allow the huge investment on them by the federal government and their respective families be a waste.
He said that NYSC designed the orientation course to bring all the graduate youths together to appreciate the diversity of the country with a view to finding lasting solutions to various challenges bedeviling Nigerians.
“Let me tell you that your coming together under a regimented arrangement is a deliberate attempt to make you appreciate one another so that when you cross-fertilise ideas intelligently and share views together in a manner devoid of rancour or bitterness, you would have learnt a lesson about leadership. Bringing you together is to test your endurance and patience and to let you know that to be a good leader, you must be a good follower as well”.
The Director General enjoined the corps members to be law abiding throughout the period of the service and beyond, while advising them to study and understand the culture, customs and traditions of the host communities.
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On the Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development, SAED, programme, the NYSC boss charged them to take it seriously, disclosing that the intervention had made many ex-corps members who embraced the programme millionaires.
While encouraging them to pursue post-camp training when they finally settle at their places of primary assignment, he said that SAED was targeted towards making the corps members to be self-employed and employers of labour who with their academic qualifications have what it takes to grow the economy of this country.
He warned them against embarking on night journeys, saying that statistics had shown that NYSC lost many corps members to needless night journeys occasioned by reckless drivers who drove under the influence of drugs.
The Director General equally warned against the use of social media to project the image of the scheme negatively, warning that recalcitrant corps members caught would be prosecuted in line with the provision of the NYSC Act and Bye-Law.
In her brief to the Director General, the State Coordinator, Mrs. Kuburat Omowumi Bakare disclosed that the corps members were well disciplined and adjusting well to the camp programmes and activities.
The State Coordinator also hinted that the secretariat had taken steps to address the food security escalated during the Annual Management Conference and had visited the host monarch, Oba Adefemi Adeleke Adegbite-Adedoyin, the Owa-Ale Adimula of Ikareland, who promised to give arable land to NYSC for farming purposes.
The highlight of the visit was the presentation of three bulls to the corps members who impressed the Director General with the 21 gunshots clap as well as cash gifts to some selected corps members which included the three Corps Camp Directors, Overall Parade Commander, Quarter Guard, NYSC Parade and Musical Band, Cultural Troupe and Man ‘O’ War corps representatives.
