The National Youth Service Corps 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 Service Corps stated that its decision was informed by the West African Examination Certificate and the scheme’s exemption Certificate which included the dates of birth of candidate holders.
Brig. Gen. Shuaibu Ibrahim, NYSC Director General, revealed this in Abuja at the 2019 Batch B pre-mobilisation workshop, stressing the scheme observed that some tertiary instituions were guilty of presenting over-aged graduates for mobilisation.
Report revealed that the Director General said the rising number of corps-producing institutions and the “attendant rise in corps members’ population pose a great challenge which we must address.”
“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. Scuh act will not be condoned and the scheme will not hesitate to apply appropriate sanctions on any institution involved.
“As a further step forward to curtail 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”.
Funmilola Bolaji is a Researcher, Writer and a trained Educationist; she’s the editor of Campusbiz Journal. You may want to reach her via for Campusbiz Journal related inquiries only.
