Management of the Benue state University yesterday said it was investigating the issue that led to the banning of prospective corps members from going to mandatory Nigerian Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme.
Prospective corps members from the Benue state University and other high institutions in Benue have been banned by the NYSC from partaking in the compulsory youths service programme on allegation of falsification of age and year of graduation.
The situation resulted to protest by the prospective corps members who yesterday besieged the state secretariat of the NYSC calling for the body to reverse its decision.
The protesters who were visibly angry also threatened to close down the NYSC orientation camp at Wannune, Tarka local government area of Benue state.
Reacting, Vice Chancellor of the Benue state university said they were shocked at the decision of the NYSC, which did not inform the management of the institution beforehand that they had detected issues with prospective members of the NYSC from the university.
He explained that on the 2nd of October this year, the Dean of students reported to him that they could not upload the names of prospective corps members from the university to the NYSC website.
According to him, the management of the university then detailed the liaison officer to write a letter to find out why the university could not upload to the NYSC website.
“We got a reply of the letter just few minutes ago, but we are doing our investigation to find out whether the fault is from the JAMB, NYSC, or the university.
But I assure you that if the problem is from our school, we will fish the culprits out and sanction them.
“We have the best forensic expert in the whole of the country from this university and we are going to engage his services to find out those behind this,” he added .
He wondered why the NYSC could not fish out the culprits and sanction them, but rather decided to come down heavily against the whole of the university as an institution.
But NYSC state Coordinator, Mrs. Awakessien Eno said they discovered student’s officers fielded names of over aged students or names of students that read courses that were excluded from NYSC mobilization.
According to her, the student’s affairs of the university had colluded with some students who were quite ambitious and wanted to serve at all cost and registered them for service.
She said an audit was carried out in most of the institutions nationwide and eventually, six major institutions were affected and many of them from Benue state.
“The audit report has been sent to the affected schools and the schools are aware of what exactly is expected of them,” she said.
