By Jerry Emmanson, Abuja
President Muhammadu Buhari has been urged by civil rights group under the aegis The Centre for Social Justice, Equity and Transparency, CESJET, to order an immediate investigation into the finances of all National Youth Service Corps, NYSC officials and management staffs connected with the online portal.
CESJET in a petition signed by its Executive Director, Sunday Attah and addressed to President Muhammadu Buhari also want a forensic audit conducted on all revenues from the online portal and remittances to the Federation account.
The NYSC had last year introduced four thousand naira (N4,000.00) fee for accessing the online portal for registration and printing of call up letter by corps members.
The petition said, “the anti-people fee was vehemently opposed by Nigerians when it was introduced because it remains exorbitant and exploitative of youths that are mobilising to serve the nation.
“Your Excellency, the NYSC management conveniently structured this extortion as a Private Public Partnership, PPP similar to the Immigration recruitment scam that led to loss of life. At inception, the claims by Brigadier-General Olawumi and his cohorts basically implied that users of the online platform must pay for the initial cost of acquiring hardware and setting up the portal. The explanation was that there would be a drop in the N4000 fee over the course of time when the cost of setting up the portal would have been recovered. Conveniently, no definite timeline for reviewing the fee was provided.
“In addition to being an extortion racket, the PPP arrangement equally implies that Your Excellency’s directive on the Treasury Single Account (TSA) for all revenues generated by government agencies is in a grey area. Whatever agreement NYSC signed with its PPP implementing partner, Sidmach Technologies Nigeria Limited, remains secretive and details of remittances to the Federal Government are unknown.
“Nigerians were also misled into thinking that using the online portal was optional while the realities on ground are totally different. Those who tried not to use the portal ultimately discovered they must revert to it or risk losing the chance to serve their fatherland.
“We resorted to writing Your Excellency after all the petitions sent to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) to halt the self enrichment being carried out by the NYSC and the principal actor, the Director General and they failed to act accordingly.
” The NYSC be compelled to truly make the use of the online portal optional
“A directive be given for a full scale investigation of the finances of all other NYSC officials and management staff with connections to the portal
“A directive be given for a forensic audit of all revenues from the online portal and remittances to the Federation Account.”
