Although the story that 281 would-be participants in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme were discovered to be fakes in Niger State has been denied, the problem of impostors in the scheme remains an incontestable fact. It was widely reported that 281 fake corps members were sent out of the recently-concluded orientation course for initiates into the programme in Niger State. They were adjudged to be fake because they could not produce the call-up letter which is the basic requirement for admission into the orientation camp.
The state Coordinator of the NYSC, Mr Steven Ehoda-Adi, was reported as saying that some of the fake corps members claimed to have misplaced their call-up letters while others said they lost theirs to armed robbers on their way to the camp. Some were said to have presented photocopies - which the NYSC does not accept.
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As a result of the perversion of values, there is hardly any facet of Nigeria’s national life in which there are no fake. Products that are being counterfeited are innumerable. There have, at different times, been reports of fake soldiers, fake policemen, fake doctors, fake lawyers, fake journalists etc. There are fake educational institutions - from the primary to the tertiary level. There have also been cases of fake NYSC orientation camps. This is why the strictness of NYSC officials in authenticating the identities of participants in the programme is logical and understandable.
However, the policy that the call-up letter should be the sole requirement for admission into the orientation camp gives rise to certain pertinent questions. Is it not possible for prospective participants in the scheme to lose their call-up letters in circumstances beyond their control such as fire, motor accident or robbery attack? Can the NYSC rule out the possibility of the call-up letter falling into a wrong hand? Doesn’t the NYSC have its own record of in-coming corps members in which names, institutions attended, courses of study, states of origin and other useful information are clearly stated? Can’t the NYSC crosscheck whatever those in such a situation claim to be with the institutions they attended or claim to have attended? The declaration of a would-be corps member who, for one reason or the other, cannot present the call-up letter as a fake should be based on a very solid ground. Reliance on failure to present the call-up letter for such an important decision can be a hasty conclusion.
Most parents are today apprehensive of allowing their children to go and render the one-year national service in distant places for a multitude of reasons prominent among which are the condition of the roads, the security situation and the high rate of road crashes. The possibility exists that a young man or woman who is turned back from the camp for such a reason may not have the wherewithal to transport themselves back to where the parents are. In performing its legitimate duty of closing its gate to impostors, the NYSC should not throw away the baby with the bathwater. In this age of technology, distance is no longer a disadvantage in communication and verification of claims. The organisation can demand that photographs and other required details be scanned to its orientation camp. The constant interaction between the NYSC and the tertiary institutions should engender an effective collaboration which should facilitate verifications and clarifications whenever the need arises.
The above argument does not discount as unnecessary the efforts being made by NYSC officials to eliminate impostors from the scheme. If the integrity of the programme is not to be compromised, they should be as painstaking as possible in ensuring the genuineness of those participating in it. The point being made is that a call-up letter issued to a prospective corps member can truly get lost. The organisation should have a mechanism for finding a neat solution to such a problem.
As in many other spheres of life in Nigeria, the NYSC appears to see the sifting out of the fake corps members as the ultimate objective. When people in positions of authority announce that they have flushed out thousands of ghost workers from the payroll, they exude complacency because they believe they have done everything that is necessary. The fraudsters lie low for a short while only to come back with a more sophisticated method. Whenever it is conclusively established, after a thorough verification of identities, that some of those who have come to be registered as corps members are fake, the NYSC should not simply expel them from the camp. The fake corps members have committed the offence of impersonation and should be handed over to the police for prosecution. It is not unlikely that such characters who head for orientation camps to be registered as corps members have criminal tendencies. When they succeed in perpetrating their evil deeds, they will disappear from the camp and it will be impossible to track them down.
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