Higher National Diploma (HND) graduates with part time National Diploma programmes have protested the proposed exclusion of them from the National Youths Service Corps (NYSC).
The graduates stormed the NYSC secretariat in Lagos in the early hours of Monday, displaying placards reading ‘Say No To Discrimination in NYSC’, ‘Equal Right for all,’ among others,
Majaro Temitope, who finished his HND programme at Yaba College of Technology, spoke on behalf of the protesting students, saying the proposed NYSC policy to exclude them for service was discriminatory.
“Many of us here did ND part time and we switched to HND full time. We were told that there is a policy that many of us who did ND part time will be denied service while we know that many of us struggled with life during our ND.
“We just pray and hope that our peaceful protest will not be more than this because we asked some of our colleagues to wait behind us so that we can have a dialogue,” he said.
He said the affected graduates had written to appropriate bodies to intervene but no response, calling on the Director-General, NYSC and Minister of Education to come to their aid.
“We have written letters to the DG, JAMB before now, so we just plead with the federal government, the ministry of education to please help us look into this matter because it is not fair at all because you are judging my service by my ND.
“Please help us look into this policy and address this matter because the registration has started today and we have not even registered yet,” he said.
A representative of the Education Rights Campaign, Adebola Osunfunrewa, said the proposed exclusion of HND graduates with part time National Diploma was the backwardness of the country’s education.
He said “This is another version of the fact that Nigeria’s education system is collapsing. How will you have over 3000 students begging to serve their fatherland in a country where we have teachers’ shortages?”
The Lagos Coordinator, NYSC, Christiana Salwang represented by the Assistant Director, Ehimuenma Itohan, told the graduates that their petitions had been forwarded to the NYSC DG.
She said the NYSC DG will not do anything outside the stipulated guidelines or policies.
