Emmanuel Onwubiko
— Aug 13, 2014 | 1 Comment

Last week, my NGO, the Human Rights Writers Association Of Nigeria raised the alarm that there may exist a well entrenched racket within the management of the National Youth Service Corps that may have perfected a mechanism for fleecing the country of huge resources annually through manipulation of the list of participants of the scheme.

We were approached by several persons and also got considerable volume of calls from concerned individuals who also fingered officials of the Federal Budget Office and the relevant committees with oversight powers over the NYSC in the National Assembly in a huge swindle which may have gone on since 2010 costing Nigeria nearly N90 billion. My shock is that since this sinister and fraudulent scheme may have existed over the years, the relevant law enforcement agencies have paid deaf ears to the groundswell of allegations that the NYSC is a cesspool of corruption and the principal actors may have perfected strategy for concealing this high profile heist.

From the allegations at our disposal, there is every indication that several billions of Naira is being fleeced yearly through the NYSC scheme. For the past three years, the scheme claims in its yearly budget to mobilise 250,000 corps members whereas the actual mobilised figures are far short of these figures. A cursory look shows that budgetary allocations and release of corps members allowance is 98% for corps members’ monthly allowances.

In view of the allegations the question is what happens to the several billions of Naira of released corpers allowance from the federal government? For instance, for 2012 and 2013, the total difference of released monthly corpers allowance which NYSC ought to return to the federal coffers is reportedly N13,583,808 billion. And for 2014 Batch ‘A’, while NYSC received money for about 100,000 corps members which it claimed it was mobilising, only 51,000 youth corpers were allegedly mobilised whereas the allowance of 49,000 unmobilised youth corpers amounting to slightly above N10.3 billion Naira may be unaccounted for if action is not taken by the Finance ministry to recoup the difference.

From information, the above stated figures of expenditures are aside other allowances like N1,500 transport allowance to camp and N1,500 transport back home at the end of the service year as well as N1,000 local transport allowance which everyone of the supposed 250,000 is said to have been collected by NYSC management.

Another angle to this alleged massive looting of the nation’s treasury is that while government appropriates/releases N500 for feeding each corps member per day for 21 days in camp, only N300 is actually said to be released to states NYSC secretariats for this. We hereby call on the relevant bodies to commence investigation to ascertain if these damaging allegations are anything to go by so as to save he nation the much needed resources at these trying periods.

We learnt from reliable sources also, that yearly, billions of Naira are released for clothing kits (uniforms) for the supposed 250,000 corps members. How come that for over four years the figure of 250,000 corpers has been constant.

Nigerians need to also ask why has government not been paying youth corps members monthly allowance direct to them just like they do with workers. Are they saying there are no ghost corpers?

There is need to stop this massive looting now. The Billions of Naira being looted into private pockets can as well be used to provide education and jobs for the youths whose name is being used to loot.

Credits: http://leadership.ng/opinions/380862/ghost-youth-corpers

Yes, there are.

Without ghost Nigerian payroll will never be completed or endorsed for payment. That means all the officers at both ends are on the know.