DIRECTOR-GENERAL of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brig.-Gen. Nnamdi Okore-Affia, Thursday lamented the quality of some of the present corps members, describing them as poor in English Language.

He believes it would be a misplacement of priority if such corps members were deployed as teachers in post-primary schools. He spoke during the 2013 Batch ‘A’ pre-mobilisation workshop in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, on the theme, Generating Credible Data for a Perfect Mobilisation Process.

According to him, the level of academic deficiency among corps members cannot be divorced from prompt rejection of some of them in their places of primary assignments. Therefore, since the contact period between the corps members and the NYSC remains minimal, he noted, it would be wrong for anybody to heap the blame of their ineptitude on the NYSC as a body.

“You will agree with me that it is extremely difficult to re-orient a corps member who cannot read,” Okore-Affia said. “To underscore the seriousness of this challenge, we now have a situation whereby principals of schools and other employers reject corps members because they cannot fit into their work schedule.

“Also, JAMB registration number must henceforth be reflected alongside other particulars of every graduate presented to the scheme for mobilisation.”

Okore-Affia said the challenge of accurate and credible data generation from institutions producing corps members for the purpose of mobilising qualified/eligible graduates into national service has been a recurring and Herculean task.

According to him, a critical review of the data submitted by corps producing institutions for 2012 service year showed serious flaws which, if unchecked, could have caused grave danger to the NYSC.

The data for mobilisation by corps producing institutions in 2012, he said, showed that many exceeded the admission quota approved by their respective regulatory bodies by as much as 500 per cent in extreme cases. Besides, he disclosed that most of the institutions that produce NYSC members often assist them to falsify their ages and present unaccredited courses as accredited.

“The direct consequences of this on the NYSC scheme is massive corps population explosion, sometimes exceeding even the safe bounds of acceptable standards of geometric progression,” he regretted. “This has made planning in the NYSC rather difficult and is fast drawing the ire of both government and the general public.

“I instituted an inquiry on illegal fees being charged corps members by some corps producing institutions before mobilising them for national service. The finding of that exercise was not only revealing but also profoundly shocking.

“It was discovered that many corps producing institutions collect from their graduating students one form of levy or the other before submitting their names for mobilisation into national service. Others also collect another form of levy before releasing their call-up letters to them.”

“In addition, some Students’ Affairs officers impose their own illegal levies before the inclusion of names of graduating students in the institution’s master list.”

Okore-Affia said it is illegal to charge any fee, whether official or otherwise, before mobilising graduates for national service and warned that henceforth, any corps producing institution found wanting would be blacklisted, with dire consequences.

He added that efforts had been made in the past to redress the lapses but regretted that some of the avoidable errors still persist. If relevant officers handling the assignments become conscientious and thorough, he noted, most of the errors, if not all, would be eliminated.