By Ogbonna Casmir
The Director-General of National Youth Service Corps, Brig. Gen.
Suleiman Kazaure has warned serving corps members to abstain from frequent travels.
He gave this warning while fielding questions from journalist shortly
after he visited a corps member, Eze Ejike Godwin at Memfys
Neurosurgery hospital, Enugu who was involved in a fatal accident on
20th December, 2016 while on transit for Christmas festival.
According him, “you know my key agenda is the welfare of my corps
members and that is the main reason we are here, to see what we can do for him, to solve the problem. He is a corps member from Enugu state but serving in Kogi but was involved in a road accident in the state while on transit to home town for Christmas celebration.
“He sustained a spinal cord
injury. We heard it and the money they charged was very huge, the
family cannot shoulder it, so NYSC decided to take it up.
“They have done the surgery and we are hopeful that very soon, he will get out of the situation. We paid about N1.8 million I will always
emphasize that corpers should as much as possible try to avoid
unnecessary journey”, he said.
The Chief Medical Director of the hospital, Prof Sam Ohaegbulam, said by the end today or tomorrow the patience will come out of intensive care unit while he explained the corps member had cervical spine injury which resulted to complete paralysis of his hands and legs.
“His condition was too critical for immediate surgery intervention and
we had to do resuscitation, battle with the measures that are
necessary to make the surgery safer because if we had acted as an
emergency, we would have lost him. There was so much swollen in the spinal cord”.
The DG had earlier declared open a 3-day training workshop on
biometric clearance of Corps members in local government areas for the South-East zone holding at Top 10 International Hotel, Enugu.
Brig. Gen. Kazaure explained that introduction of the use of
biometrics for mobilization and registration of corps members at
orientation camps has not only helped in fast-tracking the process,
but also reduced impersonation and registration of ineligible
graduates.
Its success re-affirmed our determination to adopt the use of
biometrics in the clearance of corps members both during the weekly
Community Development Services and monthly clearance.
The DG who said the project has been tested and proved positive during test-run in Lagos and FCT; that paved the way for its nationwide introduction which the North-West zone has since commenced the process.
The workshop which has the theme ‘Ensuring Accountability in corps
members’ activities using ICT’, he said is intended to give
participants made-up of heads of corps inspection and monitoring
branches, ICT desk officers, zonal and local government inspectors of
the South-Eastern states the requisite knowledge in the IT-based
clearance and monitoring of corps members.
While urging the participants to pay attention to the proceedings and
contribute meaningfully to the process, DG Kazaure explained that the outcome will further assist management in enthroning transparency in the system.
He warned the participants to be wary that information generated
through the biometric clearance exercise will form the basis for the
determination of disciplinary cases. However, corps members who miss
the biometric clearance without approval will not be considered for
payment of their monthly allowances.
Earlier in her address, the Director NYSC ICT, Mrs Christy Uba thanked
the DG for his ensuring that the scheme is second to none in the
operations and the total restoration of the scheme’s past glory.
She noted that the NYSC integrated system has reduced to the barest
minimum several problems hitherto experienced by prospective corps
members, corps members, staff, students’ affairs officers and all
stakeholders of the scheme.
“The NYSC LGA attendance and clearance system is a classical module of the NYSC integrated system designed to enhance adequate monitoring and
monthly clearance of corps members at their various places of primary assignment using their finger prints and personal data. It keeps record of absenteeism, checkmates truancy, impersonation and other vices which tends to undermine the aims and objectives of the scheme”, she said.
