Rivers State governor, Mr Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, has slammed the federal government’s nonchalant attitude to the plight of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members in the state.
The governor specifically expressed worry over the reluctance of the federal government to solve the issue of accommodation and other challenges faced by corps members posted to the state.
Amaechi, who spoke yesterday at Government House, Port Harcourt when members of the National Governing Board of the NYSC, led by Tijani Adekanbi, paid him a courtesy call, said the government at the centre has consistently failed to address most NYSC challenges, leaving them all to the state to handle, in spite of the fact that the scheme is the responsibility of the federal government.
He said, “I don’t know if you realise that NYSC is a federal scheme. If you know it is a federal scheme, why are you transferring responsibility to the state government? Even the allowances we are paying, we are not supposed to pay. I served in Abuja, nobody paid me one dime outside what the federal government paid us as allowance. The vehicles the youth service was using in Abuja were bought by the federal government, why then do we transfer federal government’s responsibility to the states?
“We are virtually funding all federal agencies in the state. If we don’t want NYSC then we should say we don’t want NYSC.
Source: Leadership