The great NYSC crime cover-up

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31 July 2011

The great NYSC crime cover-up

Almost a year after officers of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) arrested and prosecuted 69 fake National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members rounded up at an illegal NYSC orientation camp in Keffi, Nassarawa State, the suspected organisers of the camp, believed to be high-ranking NYSC officials, are still walking free and are being shielded from investigation and prosecution by the leadership of the service, NEXT investigation has shown.

Highly-placed sources in the NSCDC and the police said while the ‘fake corpers’ who are more or less victims of the corrupt and mercantile tendencies of some NYSC officials, have been disgraced and convicted, the NYSC director-general, Maharazu Tsiga, a serving Brigadier-General in the Nigerian Army, has made it impossible for operatives of the NSDC and the police to bring the suspected masterminds behind the illegal camp to book.

NEXT learnt that the NYSC boss has used his military links to block investigations into the matter and has spurned requests by the police to interrogate some of his staff implicated in the scandal.

The 69 ‘fake corpers’ including a nursing mother, were apprehended on July 26, 2010 when NSCDC operators swooped on their camp in a remote location in Nassarawa State. They were immediately arraigned before a

Keffi Upper Area Court

, which, in August 2010, sentenced each of them to three years imprisonment, with an option of a N10,000 fine.