News Editor
The leading Civil Rights Advocacy Group-: HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (HURIWA) has asked the Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives Mr. Femi Gbajabiamila-led legislative chamber to carry through with the passage of the bill to create the National Youth Service Corps Youths Trust Fund because it would serve strategic national security interests.
HURIWA which applauded the committee on youths and sports of the Federal House of Representatives for pushing for the legislative mechanisms to be activated to ensure seamless passage of the proposed legislative that will give teeth to the clarion call for the creation of the NYSC Youths Trust Fund said when created eventually, the institutional funding agency under the auspices of the National Youth Service Corps will rapidly produce hundreds of thousands of skilled youthful manpower who will also be empowered economically to generate wealth and create employment opportunities.
The Rights group recalled that the House of Representatives had recently begun the process of establishing a National Youth Service Corps Trust Fund to allow funding of the scheme from various sources even as HURIWA postulated that the National Youth Service Corps Trust Fund (Establishment) Bill 2021 is currently awaiting passage at the House on Thursday.
The proposed fund HURIWA averred is to “provide sustainable source of funds for the NYSC, skill acquisition training and provision of start-up capital to corps members, train and retrain the personnel of the NYSC, develop camps and the NYSC formations and provide facilities therein.”
The Rights group maintained too that the NYSC Youths Trust Fund will also “improve the general welfare of corps members and personnel of the scheme and enhance their preparedness to effectively discharge their statutory duties of promoting national unity, integration, self-reliance and accelerated development of the national economy.”
Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko the National Coordinator of the HUMAN RIGHTS WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA who charged the national assembly to deliver the proposed law to enable President Muhammadu Buhari authorise the creation of the critical funding mechanism said also that the Rights group has perused the bill and found out that the proposed law will, therefore, provide a legal framework for management and control of the special intervention fund established under Section 3 of the Act.
HURIWA stated that the bill partly read, “The Trust Fund established under Section 3 of this Act covers all corps members, personnel of the NYSC, orientation camps, formations, facilities and for the overall improvement and efficiency in the discharge of their duties and responsibilities.
HURIWA affirmed thus: “We are one hundred percent confident in the fact that the Trust Fund is to operate concurrently with the National Youth Service Corps scheme from the commencement of the bill. We endorse the proposal for the Fund to be financed with a levy of one per cent of the net profit of companies and organised private sector operating business in Nigeria; 0.2 per cent of total revenue accruing to the federation account; and any take off grant and special intervention fund as may be provided by the federal, state and local governments of the federation. Other sources of fund include “such money as may be appropriated to meet the objective of this Act by the National Assembly in the budget; aids, grants and assistance from international bilateral and multilateral agencies, non-governmental organisations and the organised private sector.”
“On behalf of the organised civil society community in Nigeria, we applaud the Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila-led legislative chamber for immediately working on this bill to create the NYSC YOUTHS TRUST FUND which we believe will significantly reduce insurgency and Youth restiveness by over 50% because”, argues HURIWA.
The Rights body spoke further: “if all the qualified graduates in Nigeria are to be sufficiently trained and made to acquire useful skills such as in the information technology, in the engineering fields and in other vital vocational skills that will impact meaningfully on the economic wellbeing of the youthful population in the Country, then there will be no reason left for university graduates to misuse their knowledge in perpetrating criminality such as terrorism, cybecrimes and insurgency in the Country.”
HURIWA stated thus: “We urge the National Assembly to quicken the process of the passage of this very noble and useful bill so our Youths who are graduates of different Universities can smile. It is much productive to create this Trust Fund to be managed by a body such as NYSC with a defined mandate than just to allow a body to be created that will duplicate such other bodies like National Directorate of Employment that is to serve the youths who are not University graduates and for which this proposed NYSC YOUTH TRUST FUND IS TO BENEFIT. This NYSC youth trust fund is an idea whose time has come and we are eagerly awaiting its passage and the signing into law by President Muhammadu Buhari who has performed creditably in the NYSC Youth sector since 2015”.
