News Editor
A member of the National Youth Service Corps, Ihenyen Ehinome Joy (AD/20B/1932), serving in Adamawa State, had converted an abandoned building to a Clinic in Kpogno Community, a remote village in Girei LGA of Adamawa State.
Our correspondent reports that the idea of the model Clinic came up when the corps member was assigned as an enumeration officer in the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) of the federal government. The exercise required corps members to tour remote villages of the state to enumerate and register primary school pupils for the school feeding programme.
While registering the pupils in this village (Kpogno), Joy observed that several people, particularly the children and the elderly, were not looking healthy enough. After some enquiries, she realized that the rural dwellers had to travel 14 kilometres to access the nearest clinic at another village called Borong. This inspired her to mobilise effort to transform the misfortune into an asset, beneficial to all the people. Drawing from the paradigm and leadership of the Director General, she decided to use her orientation on NYSC’s Community Development Service (CDS) Programme to strategize based on the needs of the community. Her effort payed of when she secured the necessary approval of the NYSC hierarchy, which helped her to mobilise the relevant stakeholders, particularly the Adamawa State Primary Healthcare Development Agency and most importantly collaborated with the people of the community.
Seeing and trusting her commitment, the community happily and willingly donated a four bedroom dilapidated building for the project in addition to other contributions towards its successful transformation into a viable facility.
Finally, it was tears of joy for corper Joy, her fellow corps members, and the community for a mission accomplished. With this development, the people of Kpogno Community will no longer have to travel 14 kilometres to access simple medical care.
Joy, an indigene of Edo State from Ekpoma LGA, has rescued a people whose tongue and religion may differ but share in the common brotherhood of mankind as citizens of a great country as espoused by the NYSC.
As part of efforts to ensure sustainability of management and viability of the health care centre, corps member Joy partnered with the State Primary Healthcare through the Girei LGA PHC to continue providing drugs, services as well as other medical consumables and non consumables to the people.
Elated director general of the scheme Maj. General Shuaibu Ibrahim praised corp members for sharing in his reform plans and urged staff of the corps to always uphold the founding philosophy of the programme, which was laid down by the founding fathers. He commended former Head of State Yakubu Gowon for his vision in establishing the NYSC in 1976.
Also commenting on the ingenuity of Joy, a Medical Director at Federal Polytechnic, Nasarawa, Dr Jibrin said the feat achieved by the corp member is groundbreaking. He also commended the NYSC DG for providing theenabling environment for corp members to explore.
“This is groundbreaking.
Kudos to Major General Shuaibu Ibrahim for providing the right and enabling environment for the Youth Corps members.” Dr Jibrin said.
