A
pro-democracy non-governmental organisation, Human Rights Writers Association
of Nigeria (HURIWA), has given the management of the National Youth Service
Corps [NYSC] a clean bill of health, saying based on its findings, there is no
existence of any ghost participants in the annual youth scheme.
Accordingly,
the human rights group said it had suspended its decision to drag the
management of the NYSC to the coordinating minister of the economy and minister
of finance, Dr.
Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala and other relevant anti-graft agencies over allegations of
fraudulent practices brought against it by some concerned petitioners working
in the NYSC.
Acting on a
petition two weeks ago from some anonymous insiders in the NYSC and relying on
the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act (FoI) alleging fraud and
corrupt practices in the scheme, HURIWA had sprung into action when its team of
investigators stormed Okonjo-Iweala’s office and the offices of anti-graft
agencies to dig into the matter.
Specifically,
the group’s mission was to establish the authenticity, or otherwise, of
allegations bordering on fraudulent diversion of N90 billion unspent funds by
the management of the NYSC and the existence of a properly coordinated scheme
which conceals the existence of ghost corps members in the yearly exercise.
But, in a
statement by HURIWA’s national coordinator, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko and media
affairs director, Ms. Zainab Yusuf, the group said it had found out that the
allegations were not true as it was shown evidence of refund of unspent funds
by the current NYSC management.
The statement
read in part: “Following intense investigation and full disclosure of relevant
facts and documentary evidence sighted by us, we can, for the time being, state
without equivocation that we are unable to trace the existence of any ghost
participants in the annual national youth service scheme run by the management
of the NYSC.
“We
approached the management of the NYSC in Abuja and we have since sighted some high
profile authentic auditing information indicating that, in the last couple of
years, some huge unspent funds were refunded to the coffers of the federation.
It said that
based on the above, the group had not seen any trace of the
existence of ghost participants in the programme.
It further
said: “We were also shown documentary evidence indicating that the participants
are paid the correct feeding stipends as approved by the federal government of
Nigeria.
“Except other
superior information is made available to us, we can for the time being state
that we have suspended our decision to so proceed with our mechanism of
advocacy for a probe of these allegations.
“We will
however continue to press ahead with our demand through the FOI for full
disclosure to be made to us by way of documentary evidence and not just
sighting of these official documents which were said to be classified.”
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