Following a temporary suspension of mobilization of final year students of some higher institutions in the country recently, various commentators have waded in on the matter.
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One of such, with the above caption, authored by Awunah Pius Terwase and published in The Sun Newspaper edition of Sunday, October 28, 2018, however deserves some reconstruction because much of the arguments in his narrative are ill-informed and therefore misleading.
For instance, Awunah, like most others, referred to the administrative procedure of suspension of mobilization of prospective youth service corps members by the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Directorate as a “ban” which they ignorantly said was to subsist for two years.
While it is true that NYSC did indeed write on the 2nd October, 2018, intimating Benue State University of a proposal to suspend mobilization of prospective graduates of the university, the duration was not for two years as peddled about and reflected in the “letter to the Editor” by Mr. Awunah.
Again, contrary to insinuation in the write up by Awunah and others who have commented on this “mobilization saga” since it broke out, the proposal by the NYSC Directorate to suspend mobilization of prospective corps members of Benue State University was to affect two batches, namely, Batch ‘C’ 2018 and Batch ‘A’ 2019 and not two years as has been widely publicised in unofficial dispatches.
As to the reasons why the NYSC Directorate contemplated suspension of mobilization of graduates of Benue State University from participating in the service year, Awunah alleged that either because the university altered the ages of some students or prolonged strikes by staff in the university had kept the students on their programmes long beyond the prescribed years of national service which is 30 years of age.
These allegations are also false as the NYSC Directorate collects data on graduating students from the prospective corps members themselves most of who upload such information to the NYSC portal directly following guidelines provided by the body.
It is trite knowledge that with exercises involving computers, the maxim is “garbage in, garbage out”. So if graduating students interact with the NYSC directly in the course of registering for the scheme and the latter discovers some anomalies which require ratification, how is the university culpable in this?
Suffice it to state that after proper exchange of communication between authorities of Benue State University and that of the NYSC Directorate, all discrepancies in records of graduating students have been resolved and those concerned successfully mobilized.
So far, a total of two thousand, six hundred and thirty two (2,632) have been successfully registered for the 2018 Batch “C” Orientation which commenced on Tuesday, 23rd October, 2018 with stream 1.
The Benue State University graduates, who are made up of two thousand, five hundred and eighty four (2,584) Regular and forty seven (47) sandwich students, will therefore be joining their counterparts from other higher institutions for the “Stream 2” of the same
Batch “C” 2018 Orientation, billed to commence nationwide on 15th November, 2018.
Although the NYSC Directorate had initiated the “administrative sanction” against a number of other higher institutions whose graduates are mobilized for the one year mandatory service year, one wonders why Mr. Awunah and his likes have singled out only Benue State University for mention in their interventions on the issue!
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This poser is rhetorical because all of them may not have been bothered about it for the same reasons as indeed one acknowledges that they have their constitutional right to hold and express their views and concerns.
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► Terzungwe Tser Vanger (JP, ANIPR), Principal Assistant Registrar (Information & Public Relations), Benue State University, wrote from Makurdi