By Ayodele Oni
A Yoruba Group, Apapo Oodua Koya, (AOKOYA) has called on the Federal Government to cancel National Youth Service scheme, describing it as death trap for thousands of young graduates in Yorubaland and across the country.
In a statement, signed by Col Abimbola Sowunmi, (rtd), Apapo Oodua Koya, (AOKOYA) pointed out that it was important to know if those prospective youth corps members that were abducted in Imo state, who are mainly Yoruba and Edo people, were kidnapped to settle ethnic scores and to use them as booties of the brewing asymmetric ethnic war in Nigeria.
“The National Youth Service Corps, (NYSC) conceived in 1973 by the military is no longer relevant.
“Given the security situation in Nigeria today, engaging in Youth Corps in fruitless national service has become a route to untimely death, trauma, pain and anguish.
It is time to stop the NYSC.”
AOKOYA maintained that there was no more any good reason for the NYSC programme, giving its susceptibility to deaths of young people who have just left the University many of them in their teens.
The group said 1, 780 Yoruba youth corps members in the past 10 years have either been killed, kidnapped or missing in the course of serving the country.
“Some were kidnapped and were never found as we speak. Some were kidnapped and later released. Some were killed by terrorists.
“Some died on the bad roads that dot the Nigerian landscape while some disappeared mysteriously and are listed as missing persons.”
The group maintained that there is no national service that is worth the blood of any Yoruba fresh graduates.
AOKOYA asked Yoruba fresh graduates to boycott the NYSC, urging employers of labour and the South West States to jettison the request for NYSC certificate as a condition for giving jobs to fresh university graduates.
AOKOYA faulted security claims that 10 of the NYSC members were rescued arguing that the 10 actually escaped from captivity.
The latest kidnapped NYSC victims, who have just been released Wednesday, October 7 are: Makinde Mary Oluwapelumi, Akande Kehinde Morufat, Abdul Temiloluwa Sarah, Adeniran Mariam Oluloa, Adefioye Ayomide Isaac, Adewale Paul Iyanuoluwa and Oyede Esther Funmilayo among others.
They are presently being given medical attention at the DSS medical facility in Owerri.
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