- Ejects affected corps members
No fewer than 12 National Youth Service Corps camp commanders, who allegedly flouted the order barring pregnant women and nursing mothers from participating in orientation camps and corps activities, have been sanctioned, The Point has learnt.
The camp commanders affected, it was learnt, included those in Kaduna, Edo, Akwa Ibom, Lagos, Kwara, Kebbi, Zamfara and Gombe states. Though the nature of the disciplinary action taken by the authorities against the camp commanders could not be ascertained as at the time of filing this report, a competent source disclosed to The Point that some of the affected officers had been withdrawn and sent back to their military duty posts, while also forfeiting their allowances.
The pregnant women and nursing mothers have also forfeited their service year
The Point also gathered that the pregnant women and nursing mothers allegedly smuggled into the scheme had also been ejected from the various NYSC camps across the country.
The attention of the authorities was drawn recently to this infraction, when pictures of pregnant women fully kitted in NYSC uniforms flooded the social media. The source said, “When Oga saw those women with pregnancies and even some of them breastfeeding in the camps, Oga was angry and ordered that camp commanders in the affected states be sanctioned,” said a highly placed source in Lagos, who pleaded anonymity.
“The pregnant women and nursing mothers have also forfeited their service year. They have been asked to go back home and finish with childbearing before coming back.” The source, who is a Warrant Officer 2 in the Nigerian Army and a camp provost in Lagos, said apart from the health implication associated with such category of corps members, “they cannot gain anything from the orientation exercise, because they would not be able to partake in the daily morning drill, which is a very good form of exercise.
They wouldn’t join match pasts, they cannot do press-ups and other form of rigorous exercises.” The NYSC management had in 2015 informed intended corps members that pregnant women, nursing mothers, students and postgraduate students would no longer be eligible to be called up for the mandatory one-year national service until they had weaned their children.
NYSC Director General, Brigadier-General Johnson Olawumi, stated at a two-day pre-mobilisation workshop for the 2015 Batch “B” of the programme in Kaduna that the temporary exemption of such categories of prospective participants, and post graduate students from national service, was because they would not be able to undergo the rigorous camp activities under the scheme, including orientation, primary assignment and winding-up passing out parade.
At the end of the meeting in Kaduna, the NYSC also resolved that henceforth, pregnant women and children would no longer be allowed into orientation camps across the country for service under the scheme established in 1973. Stressing that prospective corps members must go through all the stages of the national service to qualify for a Certificate of National Service,
