The need for President Bola Tinubu to implement the new N77,000 monthly stipend for members of the National Youth Service Corps in the country has been stressed.
Some of them who spoke in Ogwashi-Uku and Asaba, Delta State, lamented that the delay in implementing the new allowance is having negative effects on them.
They wondered how long it will take the federal authority to commence the payment, arguing that the scheme could as well be canceled if it cannot sustain the payment.
A Corper who was posted from Kaduna State to Delta State, Amina Bako, hinted that the service under the current N33,000 they are receiving as a monthly stipend has become a curse to them.
According to her, “Sometimes I wonder if these our leaders have conscience at all. How can you pay someone N33,000 under the current economic quagmire and expect the person to survive on it for a whole month?
“Now, look at it this way, from the miserable N33,000, I had to rent a one-room apartment and I know how much I pay every month for it. Now, the balance of N25,000 is what I am expected to survive on for the remaining one month.
“In most cases, I rely on my parents, who themselves are civil servants, to help augment my feeding allowance for the month, whereas we are supposed to be receiving something higher than the N33,000.
“We were expecting that immediately the federal government implemented the new minimum wage of N70,000 for workers, Corpers would begin to earn theirs, but that is far from it.
“We don’t know what the Director General of the scheme is even doing about it. The simple truth is that we are suffering. The federal government should immediately start to pay us the N77,000 allowance or cancel the one-year mandatory service, after all, it is not a force,” she lamented.
Another youth Corper, Sunday Adegoke from Lagos State, said he regrets applying for the scheme.
“The government came up with economic policies that are having a negative effect on the masses and abandoned youth Corpers to suffer under it.
“I was posted from Lagos State to Delta; I don’t know anybody here, and where I am serving, they don’t have a lodge for us. I have to rent a room for myself. I pay as much as N6,500 for the room out of the N33,000 the federal government is paying us.
“On a monthly basis, I live like a beggar trying to fend for myself. Is it not wickedness? Immediately the new minimum wage was implemented, we had high hopes that ours was next. But lo and behold, to date we have not heard anything nor seen anything.
“We are still earning the N33,000 under the current difficulty Nigerians are going through. For me, the simple solution to the whole issue is, if the federal government cannot implement the new salary, it is better to drop the scheme.
“You can’t subject young men and women to a terrible and harsh condition all in the name of service to your country and tell us to endure hunger and want for a better tomorrow.
“What kind of policy is that? That Corpers should suffer hunger today for a better tomorrow? Those in power, are they suffering hunger and want for a better tomorrow as they are telling other Nigerians to do?
“Or, are they telling us it is their right to enjoy the good things of life, while others suffer? If they know paying us N77,000 is too much, let them scrap the NYSC scheme and stop punishing young Nigerians,” Adegoke said.
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