Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has criticised the management of the National Service Corps (NYSC) scheme for allegedly paying corps members N33,000 in January, amid public avowal to commence payment of N77,000 monthly allowance.

The group said it came to its knowledge that the corps members were paid N33,000 monthly allowance as against the newly reviewed allowance of N77,000 after the Director General, Brigadier General Yushau Ahmed, had promised that the new allowance would take effect.

It urged the authorities to hasten up implementation of the reviewed allowance going by the inflationary trends in the national economy and given the high costs of goods and services in the land.

HURIWA’s National Coordinator,  Emmanuel Onwubiko, said: “We are saying that if this January 2025 payment of N33,000 was made in error instead of the new allowance of N77,000, then we call on the management of the NYSC and the honourable Minister of Youth Development to do the needful because there is no way you will expect the youth corpers to develop with a paltry N33, 000 per month. Please sirs, kindly begin paying corpers the N77,000 without further administrative error.”

HOWEVER, Prof. Philip Adetiloye of the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State, has called for scrapping of the scheme, arguing that it had outlived its purpose of bridging the educational gap between the North and South.

He said since every state has federal, state and private universities, deploying NYSC members to fill the educational gap had outlasted its usefulness.

The retired Professor of Crop Science, who submitted while briefing newsmen in Ado-Ekiti yesterday on the state of the nation, lamented that Nigeria has become a field laboratory for testing the limits of human endurance.

According to him, the major objective of the NYSC is to expose Nigerians to other cultures to foster national unity.

He stated: “The National Youth Service has not increased national unity nor reduced the perceived differences among the ethnic nationalities in Nigeria. Nigeria is more divided today than ever due to the insecurity unleashed by Fulani herdsmen on other ethnic nationalities and the severe poverty that can be attributed to well-established corruption and injustice in the allocation of resources in Nigeria.”

On the local government autonomy, the don urged foreign embassies to stop issuing visas to governors, their relatives, and political appointees in states where the concept is inoperative.

Adetiloye blamed the government for youth and graduate unemployment, payment of slave wages to those in employment, severe hunger and extreme poverty that has increased the level of hopelessness in the country.