We didn’t find ghost corps members in NYSC, says HURIWA

A PRO-DEMOCRACY non-governmental organisation, Human Rights Writers Association Of Nigeria (HURIWA), has stated that it has suspended its decision to drag the management of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to the Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and relevant anti-graft bodies “following allegations of fraudulent practices brought to our attention by some concerned petitioners working in the NYSC.”

HURIWA had said that based on a “petition at our disposal from anonymous insiders from the NYSC disclosed our plan to proceed to the Office of the Co-ordinating Minister of the Economy and the anti-graft agencies if we are satisfied with the veracity of the allegations of over N90 billion fraudulent diversion of unspent funds by the management of the NYSC and also the allegation of the existence of a properly co-ordinated scheme that conceals the existence of ghost corps members in the yearly exercise.”

In a statement by the National Co-ordinator, Mr. Emmanuel Onwubiko and National Media Affairs Director, Zainab Yusuf, HURIWA stated thus: “Following intense investigation and full disclosure of relevant facts and documentary evidence sighted by us, we can for the time being state without equivocations that we are unable to trace the existence of any ghost participants in the yearly national youth service scheme run by the management of NYSC. We have also been shown evidence of refund of unspent funds by the current management.

“It would be recalled that our office received a petition from some concerned Nigerians with knowledge about the workings of the NYSC as insiders which primarily centered on two allegations - fraud and existence of ghost corps members in the scheme over the years. Based on the provisions of the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, we approached the management of the NYSC in Abuja and we have since sighted some high profile authentic auditing information indicating that in the last couple of years, some huge unspent funds were refunded to the coffers of the federation. Based on the information at our disposal from official sources for now, we can conclude that we have not seen any justification to claim conclusively for now that there is any trace of the existence of ghost participants in the yearly national youth service scheme. We were also shown documentary evidence indicating that the participants are paid the correct feeding stipends as approved by the Federal Government of Nigeria. Except other superior information is made available to us, we can for the time being state that we have suspended our decision to so proceed with our mechanism of advocacy for a probe of these allegations. We will however continue to press ahead with our demand through the FoI for full disclosure to be made to us by way of documentary evidence and not just sighting of these official documents which were said to be classified.”

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