NAN-H-83
Integration
By Temitope Salami
Sagamu (Ogun), May 25, 2017 (NAN) The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has called on corps members to engage the scheme as a tool for national integration and capacity building in the area of career development.
The Ogun NYSC State Coordinator, Mrs Ejiaka Mbachi, made the call on Thursday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Sagamu.
Mbachi spoke to NAN on the sidelines of the swearing-in of the Batch ‘A’ Stream 1 corps members at the NYSC Permanent Orientation Camp at Sagamu.
She said the NYSC had drawn up programmes to develop the skills and talents of corps members during their orientation exercise and while at their places of primary assignments.
“For the serious minded ones, we have so many programmes to keep them busy and forge their career paths objectively.
“There is the Skills and Empowerment Programme (SAED) which is now fully integrated for the entire service year as well as various sporting activities they can choose from.
“My advice to them is that they must endeavour to listen and try to develop their potentials during the lectures because those things most of them ignore may end up being the most important ones.
“Knowledge is never finite. Irrespective of their disciplines, whatever they endeavour to learn during the service year is going to be useful for them at some point in their lives,” Mbachi told NAN.
Earlier in her address to the corps members at the swearing-in exercise, Mbachi implored them to be of good behaviour with strong display of discipline.
She said the youths had been mobilised to bring their ideas and energy to bear in the effective development of the nation as patriotic citizens.
Mbachi commended the state government for its support in ensuring the safety of the corps members and its unwavering support in the area of inputs and logistics to the NYSC scheme.
She tasked employers not to reject corps members assigned to them and to schedule challenging tasks to make their service year rewarding.
According to Mbachi, the orientation exercise, which commenced on Tuesday in the state, has a total of 2, 471 corps members, made up of 1,048 males and 1,423 females.
The NYSC official also disclosed that some who appeared for the orientation with serious health concerns were granted permits to return for the second phase of the programme commencing immediately after the orientation course.
Similarly, the Acting President of Nigeria, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, used the opportunity to reiterate government’s existing policy that no corps members, having been assigned, should be rejected.
Osinbajo, whose address was delivered by Mr Afolabi Afuape, the Ogun Commissioner for Youths and Sport and Chairman, Ogun NYSC Governing Board, said the nation depended on the labour of youths.
He tasked the youths to imbibe the ‘Change Begins with Me’ mantra of the Federal Government with the aim of restoring lost national values.
“You must all consider yourselves as agents of this change we desire to get us to our promised destination; you must live it and work it,” said Osinbajo. (NAN)
TDS/MAS/OJO
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(Edited by Moses Solanke/Mufutau Ojo)