A bill to amend the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Act was stepped down in the House of Representatives at plenary on January 17. The bill is a consolidation of six bills seeking to amend the Act, jointly sponsored by Hon. Eta Mbora (PDP; Cross River), Hon. Abbas Adigun (PDP; Oyo), Hon. Ben Igbakapa (PDP; Delta), Hon. Moshood Akinolu (APC; Lagos) and Hon. Oluyemi Taiwo (PDP; Oyo). It seeks to amend \u00a0section 2 of the Act to make the National Service optional rather than compulsory for graduates under the age of 30 years. The bill also provides that an exemption letter be given to any graduate who applies for it in lieu of participating in the Service.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nbill further seeks to amend section 18(2) of the NYSC Act to increase the\naccommodation and transport allowances paid to Corps members by their\nemployers, to reflect current economic realities. The law currently provides an\naccommodation allowance of N250 and a transport allowance of N150. The\namendment increases these amounts to N20,000 and N15,000, respectively. In\naddition, the bill seeks to ensure that Corps members who are interested in\njoining the military and paramilitary services gain automatic employment while\nin the orientation camps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However,\nsome Members opposed the proposed amendment to make NYSC optional. Hence, the\nbill failed to pass for Second reading. The House resolved that the bill be\nstepped down for review by the Committee on Rules and Business for the\ncontentious proposals to be removed and the bill re-considered for Second\nReading. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\ndebate of the importance of the NYSC programme has been on among Nigerians,\nwith some citizens canvassing that insecurity and ethnic tensions have made the\nprogramme less desirable, while others are of the opinion that the employment\nopportunities it provides to graduates remain relevant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\nis unclear why this amendment is being presented as a regular bill, as the NYSC\nAct is one of the four laws embedded in the Constitution, and as such, will\nrequire a Constitution amendment to alter its provisions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A bill to amend the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Act was stepped down in the House of Representatives at plenary on January 17. The bill is a consolidation of six bills seeking to amend the Act, jointly sponsored by Hon. Eta Mbora (PDP; Cross River), Hon. Abbas Adigun (PDP; Oyo), Hon. Ben Igbakapa (PDP; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3071"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3078,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3071\/revisions\/3078"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placng.org\/Legist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}