CRISIS-prone states have been excluded by the National Youth Corps Service (NYSC) from the yearly posting of corps members for the mandatory national assignment.
Mr. Gabriel Ibe, the Oyo State Coordinator of the NYSC, disclosed yesterday that the management of the corps would no longer post corps members to crisis-ridden areas.
He spoke in Ibadan when he led top members of his officials to visit the wife of the state governor, Mrs. Florence Ajimobi
And in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, kidnappers of five corps members in Omademe Ikwerre Local Council have asked for a ransom of N100 million for their release.
The corps members were kidnapped on Tuesday when they were returning from the inspection of a project in Omademe, as part of their Community Development Services (CDS).
The kidnappers contacted friends of the corps members yesterday and demanded for N100 million ransom for their release.
An official of the NYSC in Ikwerre council confirmed that they had also asked him to tell both the federal and state government to raise the ransom money.
“The kidnappers have called and they are asking for N100 million as ransom. They are saying that N20 million must be paid for each of the corps members. They were even telling us to pay the money without delay, that delay is dangerous. I do not understand the meaning of that language, but I pray that nothing should happen to the corps members,” he said.
Ibe said each state coordinator had been directed by the NYSC management not to post any corps member to
any crisis prone area in the country, adding that the directive would take effect with the next deployment of corps members on July 7.
He said the security and safety of the corps members had been the major challenge of the scheme in recent time, stressing that the agency had taken appropriate steps to protect them.
According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Mrs. Ajimobi decried the recent killing of some corps members in the post-election violence that erupted in some parts of the country, stressing that such incident would have been averted in a pro-active manner.