Olaleye Aluko, Abuja
The National Youth Service Corps says it has decided to henceforth include the date of birth of corps members on the certificate of national service as a measure to guard against age falsification.
The NYSC said its decision was informed by the West African Examination Certificate and the scheme’s Exemption Certificate which included the dates of birth of the holders.
The NYSC Director-General, Brig Shuaibu Ibrahim, stated this in Abuja at the 2019 Batch B pre-mobilisation workshop, noting that the scheme observed that some tertiary institutions were guilty of presenting over-aged graduates for mobilisation.
Ibrahim said on Tuesday that the rising number of corps-producing institutions and the “attendant rise in corps members’ population pose a great challenge which we must address.”
The DG said, “We have observed that some institutions present over-aged graduates for mobilisation. Such graduates falsify their age in order to avoid appearing on the exemption list. Such act will not be condoned and the scheme will not hesitate to apply appropriate sanctions on any institution involved.
“As a further step toward curtailing age falsification, we have decided to include date of birth on the certificate of national service and exclusion letter. This is just as in the case of the WAEC certificate and the NYSC Exemption Certificate. We also plan to carry out advocacy to encourage other examination bodies to adopt the same approach.
“We have also observed cases of suspected connivance whereby some accredited institutions help unaccredited ones to mobilise unqualified graduates. While the scheme will continue to sanction erring institutions, we are working on introducing a platform on the NYSC portal where the corps producing institution will be required to upload the list of their matriculated students every year.
“This will be used to eliminate the registration of persons whose names are presented for mobilisation but who are not found on the matriculation list.”
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