NYSC Orders Akwa Ibom Coordinator To Remove Firewood From Orientation Camp Kitchen, Replace With Gas Cylinders

The management of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has ordered the Akwa Ibom State Coordinator of the scheme to remove firewood from the orientation camp kitchen and replace it with gas cylinders, SaharaReporters has learnt.

The order reportedly issued by the Director-General of the NYSC, Brig Gen Yusha’u Ahmed, comes after SaharaReporters reported that the Akwa Ibom State Coordinator threatened to punish corps members for exposing poor feeding, fetching firewood from the forest for cooking.

SaharaReporters had reported that the corps members undergoing their national service at the Akwa State Orientation Camp raised the alarm that the State Coordinator of the Scheme, Ekwe N. I. Chinyere, collected their phone numbers and threatened to punish them after SaharaReporters reported how the corps members lamented that they were being poorly fed.

The aggrieved corps members had told SaharaReporters that the state coordinator and other officials allegedly forced bad meals on the corps members, necessitating most of them to spend their personal money buying food.

The state NYSC in a release however said that the coordinator neither collected any corps members’ phone numbers nor threatened them.

The Akwa Ibom NYSC denied asking corps members to fetch firewood from the camp forests, saying corps members only help in preparation of the ingredients for their meals.

However, the NYSC management did not dispute the pictorial evidence of how corps members were forced to fetch and carry firewood from the camp forests.

The coordinator did not also dispute the pictorial evidence of how corps members were forced to cook food, frying akara with firewood, nor the fact that the corps members’ feeding allowance was increased by the Nigerian government from N650 per day to N1,500.

The NYSC management also did not argue that many corps members exited from the camp on account of sickness, pregnancy, marriage etc and some went to Mammy market and buy food due to poor quality of the camp food and their feeding allowance allegedly pocketed by the coordinator.

“As I’m filing this report, we received the information that the Hon. Minister of Youths is coming to the Akwa Ibom camp, the DG of NYSC called the coordinator and directed her to immediately remove all the firewood from the kitchen and replace it with gas cylinders,” a source told SaharaReporters on Thursday.