NYSC: Ijaw youths kick against postings to North as Orientation camps open today

Even as the three weeks orientation programme of the Batch B National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) begins today, August 5, 2014 at various orientation camps across the country, Ijaw youths are kicking against the posting of their graduates to states in the northern part of Nigeria.

The Ijaw Youth Council, IYC, describing it as “the deliberate and indiscriminate posting of Ijaw graduates to the Northern part of the country”, decried the action saying it was an attempt to expose their people to the insecurity in that part of the country.

Speaking on behalf of the body, its spokesman, Mr. Eric Omare, said it will not accept a situation where Ijaw youths would be killed in the North, while Northern youths enjoy peace and work with multinational oil companies in Ijawland. He said it was reckless to post youths from the Southern parts of Nigeria to the North in the face of the high insecurity in that region.

Omare said: “IYC maintains its earlier position that Ijaw graduates and anybody from Southern Nigeria should not be posted to the North and that the NYSC scheme should be reviewed to ensure that youths serve in their region.

“The idea of national integration, which necessitated the posting of youths to different parts, cannot be used as a justification to post Ijaw youths to the North with the current security situation.”

Meanwhile orientation camps open today with the exception of those posted to Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Osun, Yobe, and Lagos, who would begin theirs September 1, making the stream 2 of the batch B. Corp members posted to Borno and Yobe would be camped in Nasarawa and Abuja respectively