The bill for an act to establish the Nigerian Peace Corps, first introduced by Senator Alkali Jajere in the 7th Assembly, and had passed through second reading but didn’t scale through before the end of the 7th Assembly has scaled through second reading in the Senate. ENE OSANG highlights what Nigerian youths stand to gain if passed into law.
This bill re-introduced to the 8th Assembly and sponsored by Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume, has numerous benefits to the social economic development of the country and its citizenry particularly the Nigerian youths.
Presenting a lead debate on the Nigerian Peace Corps, Senator Ndume maintained that the Nigerian Peace Corps, if given the status, “will adequately engage the Nigerian in the educational institutions to control the vices of cultism, examination malpractice, and other criminal acts engaged in by the teeming student population; alongside provision of security services in the educational institutions to forestall ugly incidences of school raids and student’s kidnapping and rape.
Ndume said it will also be a means of training and equipping youths in the areas of peace education, conflict mediation, intervention, reconciliation and confidence building, including training youths with good virtuous, strong passion and commitment to the art of patriotism, community services and nation building.
He added that it will enable youths render support services in community activities such as immunization, population census, elections and sanitation exercises in rural and urban areas, as well as creating data bank and a reservoir of trained, qualified professional and non-professional youths for easy accessibility of manpower from the pool of well-groomed youths whenever the nation needs their services for either permanent or ad-hoc employment.
“Currently in Nigeria, we are investing lot of energies and resources to contain the menace of insurgency, militancy, kidnapping, vandalism, armed robbery, and political thuggery, drug trafficking, prostitution, suicide bombing, castle rustling and a host of other social vices.
“These vices no doubt constitute social challenges that have retrogressive effects and implications on the economic development and security of the nation. From research, the key players in most of these vices are the unattended youths, who are pushed into criminality by the high level of unemployment in the country,” he said.
“This chamber debated and agreed on the fact that unemployment has reached an alarming rate in this country. The rate of unemployment which stood at 24% by 2014 translates to about 13mllion of our youths having no means of livelihood. This makes them vulnerable to criminal tendencies thereby undermining the security, peace and order of the nation.
“The aforementioned and many other factors are indications that something needs to be done in order to forestall the complete breakdown of law and order in the land. To me, the non-engagement of our youths with employment opportunities is one of the contributory factors to the high rate of youth involvement in criminal activities,” he added.
To this end, the Senator called on his fellow law makers to pass the bill into an enabling law, stressing that there is a need to intervene and innovate to bring about change in the dissemination of security in the country.
His approximation of the financial implications for the establishment of the National Peace Corps puts a total project/estimated cost for first year of commencement of the agency including office and residential accommodation, furniture, equipment for the corps to N521, 920, 123.36.
Reacting to the passage of the bill at the second reading by the Senate, the National Commandant Peace Corps of Nigeria Dr. Dickson Akoh, Expressed satisfaction on the upper legislative chamber for placing the interest of the teeming Nigerian youths in the front burner.
According to Akoh, it was high time for Nigerian youths to be properly guided and motivated towards the part of integrity, career development and creativity, saying this will in no doubt cumulate into genuine nation building.
He assured that more youths will be gainfully employment when the bill is finally passed into law as it seeks to empower, develop and provide alternative employment for the youths to facilitate peace, community services and other related matters.
“The Nigeria Peace Corps Act when passed into law will besides providing employment for over 800,000 Nigerian youths, also will substantially address social problems confronting Nigeria youths through their pre-occupation in meaningful and productive ventures where they will be economically relevant to themselves and the larger society.
“Before the bill was re introduced in the National Assembly Nigerian Youths have been benefitting from the organization because currently we have over 98,000 youths, and in all the states of the federation we have our presence with our offices functional and youths have been preoccupied over the years,” he said.
Akoh noted that the bill going to the National Assembly and scaling through second reading in both Senate and the House of Representatives and being referred to the Senate Committee on Interior to organize a public hearing will sincerely motivate the youths who have been committing themselves selflessly in the service of the organization in the time past.
Adding that the Peace Corps is a window of opportunity that will bring more jobs, engagement and empowerment for the Nigerian youths, while stressing that for peace to be attained in Nigeria, the youths must be adequately preoccupied and accommodated in the scheme of things.
“At the level that we are now, I nurse no fear of the bill not becoming law rather my joy is seeing that the interest of Nigerian youths being protected. Whether I am there or not is not an issue but history will continue to reckon with the fact that I founded the organization and today it is given prominence by the National Assembly.
“I also believe for sure that Mr. President during his electioneering campaign placed serious emphasis on how to engage Nigerian youths in meaningful and productive venture and this organization stand out uniquely to accommodate over 800,000 Nigerian youths.
“It is not all about one being selfish, I have initiated an idea and sold it to the public, if the public accept the idea I will be the person to celebrate but then I also believe that if you look at the content of the bill it has made sufficient provisions that those who are current members the position they are occupying the organizations access and reliability will automatically be transferred to the Nigerian peace corp.”
The Commandant re-emphasized that once the bill is signed into law and the act is promulgated, peace corp officials will be used for national assignments instead of risking the lives of untrained National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members for assignments that could endanger their lives.
He said, “Instead of deploying NYSC members for National events like election, whether it is registration or during elections and putting their lives on the risk it is better you use organizations like Peace Corps of Nigeria, it is one of the objective functions that is applying there because officers of peace corps have already been trained on security and safety measures, unlike picking raw person from the streets and start pushing them towards a battle field that the person may not understand and how to embark on self defense whenever a situation arise.”
“All these things have been provided for and the organization also made adequate provisions that upon graduation from secondary and tertiary schools, the data or information of youths should be transferred to the Peace Corps so that they will find a way of preoccupying them.
“Our reason is because if these youths are adequately catered for as they are placed on the reserve list, when there is any window of opportunity of employment or recruitment into conventional security agencies we will send their names because Peace Corps members must not be allowed to carry arms and be an armed establishment.
