Civil rights advocacy group, Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA today raised dust over some National Youth Service Corps, NYSC members that were kidnapped at Rumuji in the Emuoha Local Government Area of Rivers State about a week ago.
HURIWA, in a statement by its National Coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, carpeted the NYSC for not doing anything to secure the release of the Corpers whose lives have been endangered in the service of their fatherland.
The group also said the casualty figure of Corpers killed and kidnapped while serving their fatherland was alarming and should be nipped in the bud.
It called on the about-to-be inaugurated National Assembly to review the entire NYSC scheme, saying the circumstances that necessitated the creation of the scheme 50 years ago in 1973 have changed drastically and thus necessitated a total overhaul of the scheme.
You will recall that an unspecified number of corps members, who were returning from the NYSC orientation camp in Ondo State to Port Harcourt, Rivers State, were abducted along the Emuoha axis of the East-West Road.
It was learnt that the bus in which they were travelling was intercepted by the miscreants last Tuesday.
It was further gathered that in the pandemonium that ensued, five of the corps members escaped, while an unspecified number who were not so lucky were whisked away to an unknown destination.
Reacting, HURIWA’s Onwubiko said, “The growing attendant deaths and kidnappings of corp members deployed to parts of the country is becoming alarming and unacceptable.
“The NYSC management has sadly not done much to secure kidnapped corpers in Rivers State and the state government as well as security agencies have equally abandoned the helpless corpers.
“The new DG of NYSC has his job cut out for him, so let him face his job and avoid distractions. This is why some people suggest that NYSC has become irrelevant and therefore needs to be scrapped or made optional – a position that the next session of the National Assembly should debate dispassionately and reach a determination by commencing and completing the amendments of the NYSC enabling Act.”
