Month: August 2023

Premium Times

More facts have emerged about the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) status of the Minister of Art, Culture and Creative Economy, Hannatu Musawa.

Ms Musawa has for weeks been in the eye of the storm for failing, during her confirmation hearing at the Nigerian senate, to provide evidence that she participated in the mandatory national youth service programme after her graduation from the university.

That controversy deepened in the past days following the disclosure by the NYSC that the minister is currently undergoing her national youth service, sparking calls by her critics that she should vacate office.

But PREMIUM TIMES can authoritatively report today that Ms Musawa’s national service saga has a longer history and is far more complicated than is publicly known.

A review of a cache of documents and interviews with people familiar with the matter revealed that Ms Musawa and NYSC authorities had battled for at least three years over her real NYSC status and a withheld certificate.

While the lawyer claimed she completed her national service in 2003 and should be issued the withheld certificate, the NYSC claimed she absconded midway into her service. After the years-long back and forth failed to produce results, Ms Musawa then opted to be remobilised to serve out whatever period of time the NYSC believes is outstanding for her. “We advised her to sue the NYSC over the matter,” an associate of the minister told PREMIUM TIMES. “But she refused, saying she preferred a peaceful resolution of the matter.”

An NYSC discharge certificate issued in Ms Musawa’s name in 2003 exists and is in the custody of the Corps, according to documents seen by this newspaper. However, authorities are withholding the document after accusing her of absconding at a point during her service year. On her part, Ms Musawa said the NYSC was not diligent and careful enough in its search for her record and that she was not accorded a fair hearing to prove that she did not abscond.

Ms Musawa, an inferno and the search for a certificate
In 2020, former President Muhammadu Buhari nominated her for appointment as the national commissioner representing Nigeria’s northwest geopolitical zone on the board of the National Pension Commission (PENCOM).

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In preparing for her screening by the Senate, Ms Musawa wrote the NYSC through its Kaduna State coordinator requesting the replacement of her NYSC certificate.

According to her, the NYSC certificate was part of the documents that got burnt in an inferno that razed her Asokoro residence in 2019.

“Last year, on Saturday, 14th September 2019, at approximately 5:52 pm, a fire broke out in my house at No 15, Justice Lawal Uwais Street, Asokoro, Abuja. Many of my documents were lost in the fire, including which was my NYSC certificate,” she wrote in the letter dated 30 September 2020. “Therefore, I am writing to apply for the replacement of my NYSC Certificate that was lost in the fire incident.”

The Kaduna State NYSC searched for Ms Musawa’s records in its certificate issuance registers but did not find any matching information. The State Coordinator, Isa Wana, therefore, forwarded Ms Musawa’s request to the Corps Certification Department at the NYSC headquarters in Abuja.

Documents seen by PREMIUM TIMES showed that the minister was called up for national service in September 2002 and posted to the Ministry of Justice, Abakaliki, Ebonyi State. Five months into the service year, in February 2003, she was redeployed to Kaduna State.

The NYSC insisted there is no record that the then corps member continued her service after redeploying to Kaduna. But Ms Musawa said the corps only needed a further careful search for her records in Ebonyi and Kaduna to determine the authenticity of her claims that she completed her service. She also pleaded to be given an opportunity to provide documents, including copies of letters from Manema Universal Limited in Kaduna, her NYSC employer during the last part of her service year.

In December 2020, Ms Musawa wrote to the NYSC governing board, asking that the board intervene by giving her a fair hearing regarding the matter. But in a 17 March 2021 reply, the Board said her case had been declared closed, and no further search of her documents was necessary. “The board prays that you accept its decision in good faith and that this becomes the end of this matter as far as the NYSC is concerned,” the letter, signed by Board Secretary Abdullahi Jikamshi, said.

Despite this verdict by the NYSC Board, Ms Musawa did not relent in the push for her certificate. In August 2022, Ms Musawa wrote a 10-page letter to the then Minister of Youths and Sports Development, Sunday Dare, detailing her ordeal. She pleaded for the review of the NYSC’s decision on her service status and the withholding of her certificate. “My reputation, future, career and integrity could be eroded if this matter is not properly handled,” she wrote in the letter, a copy of which this newspaper obtained.

She claimed she was never accorded a fair hearing throughout the period of the appeal to get her NYSC certificate. According to her, the NYSC repeatedly made the mistake of searching for the wrong call-up number. Instead of NYSC/LAW/2001/405353, she said the NYSC continued to search for NYSC/LAW/2001/405351. The mistake in the call-up number search was made from the Kaduna State office of the NYSC where the search began, she said.

Ms Musawa also maintained that she completed her NYSC service at Manema Universal Limited in Kaduna but did not collect her certificate at the time because of an illness. “I completed the service in September 2003 and obtained my clearance but didn’t attend the passing-out ceremony at NYSC due to illness,” she said.

She added that she applied for the replacement of the certificate because she believed she had collected the certificate. “At the time I made the application for certificate replacement to the NYSC, I was under the honest and genuine belief that I had collected my certificate at the end of the service year since it was 17 years ago,” she added.

Ms Musawa also told then Minister Dare that “The DG NYSC has been acting on the information he has received without giving me an opportunity to be heard and, thus, has made conclusions that remain detrimental to my future even and most especially beyond the present assignment.

“From all indications, it would appear that the DG NYSC has become sentimental and ceases to be impartial in this matter. It is clear that I have not received a fair hearing and fair consideration from him in the least bit. Thus, I pray that all actions taken therein by the DG NYSC in this matter should be reversed as prejudicial and the whole matter reconsidered dispassionately by another objective body or person.

An unyielding Musawa Plea and a remobilisation

However, her appeal to Minister Dare for a reconsideration of her case did not produce the result she desired. Nonetheless, she continued her push to collect her service certificate, her associates said. When it became clear that she was not making any headway, she then requested to be allowed to reenroll for whatever number of months the NYSC believed was outstanding on her service year.

The Director of Press and Public Relations of the NYSC, Eddy Megwa, told DAILY TRUST Ms Musawa was remobilised and had been participating in the national youth service scheme for the past eight months in Abuja.

Her associates say having done an extra eight months of national service in Abuja, in addition to the five she did in Ebonyi, the embattled minister can be said to have completed her one-year service. “She even overstayed in service,” one associate said, asking not to be named because he was not authorised to discuss the matter with the media.

PREMIUM has not been able to independently verify that claim. Ms Musawa and Mr Megwa, the NYSC spokesperson, did not answer or return calls made to their known telephone numbers seeking their comments for this story.

What NYSC law says
Established by Decree number 24 of 2 May 1973, the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) was created for “proper encouragement and development of common ties among the youths of Nigeria and the promotion of national unity”.

The decree, which mandates all Nigerians who graduate from a university in or outside Nigeria to undergo the programme for a period of 12 months, has, however, been reviewed by the legislature since the return to democracy.

According to Section 2(2) of the NYSC Act (2004), the only excluded Nigerians from the mandatory participation in the scheme are those who attained the age of 30 before their date of graduation, those who served in the Nigerian armed forces or the Police for more than nine months, staff of Nigerian security organisations, and those conferred with national honours.

Born on 1 November 1974, Ms Musawa graduated from the University of Buckingham and the Nigerian Law School before age 30 and is therefore eligible for national service.

Minister of Art, Culture & Creative Hannatu Musawa has broken her silence on the controversy of retaining office while serving as a member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).

Although the issue of her NYSC status has been in the news for years, it regained prominence after the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) raised the alarm that one of the ministers of President Bola Tinubu was a serving corps member.

Subsequently, Eddy Megwa, Director of Public Relations of the scheme, said Musawa was occupying the ministerial position in breach of the NYSC Act.

Speaking with Daily Trust, Megwa explained that it was against the NYSC Act for any corps member to pick up any government appointment until the one-year service was over.

He said Mrs Musawa was originally mobilised in 2001 for the youth service to Ebonyi State where she had her orientation programme but later relocated to Kaduna State to continue the programme.

Megwa said it was when she got to Kaduna that she absconded and didn’t complete the programme, adding that it was the scheme would look into the issue and take action where necessary.

But in a statement on Sunday, the minister gave the reason why she deferred service until 2023.

She also said she was posted to Akwa Ibom as against Ebonyi which the NYSC spokesman mentioned.

“I will like to state clearly that contrary to wrong insinuations and false assumptions in a section of the mainstream media and social media where false accusations have been made, there is no breach of any law or constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended regarding my current position as a Minister and status as serving Corp member.”

“It must be said that there is no law of Nigeria or any part of the our constitution and NYSC Act that states that a serving Corp member can not be appointed by the President of Nigeria or any other appointing authority into political positions. Equally, no part of our existing laws and NYSC Act says that a corps member must finish service before he/she can be appointed into political office. There is no legal and constitutional limitations whatsoever. I have not broken any law of Nigeria.”

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Professor Emmanuel Osodeke is the President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). In this interview, Osodeke says Nigeria’s education sector was catastrophic under the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari, warning on the new Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman: “Such a minister should be somebody who knows what a university is and who knows what education is.

Two, he should be somebody who has the interest of Nigerian pupils, young boys and girls, at heart.

Three, the person should be somebody who has his family in the Nigerian university system, secondary and primary schools, not somebody whose children are outside the country studying”.

He speaks on other issues in the polity. Mamman, 69, was sworn in as Minister of Education on Monday. Born on July 7, 1954, Mamman graduated from Ahmadu Bello University in 1983 with a Bachelor of Laws degree.

He bagged his MSc and PhD degrees from the University of Warwick, England. The Minister is the first Senior Advocate of Nigeria from Adamawa State and a recipient of the national honour of Officer of the Order of the Niger.

He ran for Adamawa State governorship election in 2014 under the platform of the All Progressives Congress. Mamman was until his appointment into President Bola Tinubu’s cabinet the Vice Chancellor of Baze University, Abuja, a private tertiary institution founded in 2011 by Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed. He served as the Director General of the Nigerian Law School from 2005-2013.

Recall that universities in the country were shut for about six months at the twilight of the Buhari administration as lecturers downed tools over unmet demands including poor funding of the institutions.

The lecturers were forced back to work after a court ordered them to do so. They are still battling issues related to the strike especially backlog of unpaid salaries.

Excerpts of Osodeke’s interview: Let’s start from the state of education in Nigeria today. How do you see it?

Most of the past leaders have really not given attention to the education system for growth and that is why we have problems especially on the issue of funding.

If you check, in West Africa, Ghana, Cameroon, even South Africa, no country gives less than 15 percent of their budget to education, but, last year, we got 5.3 percent and it has never gone beyond 10 percent in the last ten years. So that’s the critical issue. In the early 60s and 70s, Western Region was giving 30 percent to education.

Do you know why our leaders don’t give education attention? Because the children of those who should ensure that it is done are not studying in the country. In the first six months of last year, Nigerians paid 600 million US dollars to American and UK universities as tuition fee. If you multiply that, it is more than two hundred billion naira. That is what we have been saying, give education attention every year to revamp it but they are not interested. Those who run the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Education, all their children are studying abroad.

So, they don’t care what is happening here and the implication is very clear. While our lecturers are rushing out of the country, no lecturer from anywhere, even West Africa, wants to come to Nigeria. When I was a student in Rivers State University of Science and Technology then, there were lecturers from five countries teaching in my Department.

We had lecturers from Sri Lanka, Philippine, Poland, Ghana and Nigeria teaching in my Department, but, today, you don’t see any foreign lecturer.

To now compound the bad situation, they are trying to push the Nigerian system into the bureaucratic system which does not happen anywhere in the world.

The university has a law and that law states how a university should be run. Thank God that the National Industrial Court gave a judgment that IPPIS should not apply to university. When you go round these universities today, there are many of our colleagues who have not earned salary from three to 30 months because of IPPIS.

There are some people whose consequential adjustment of 2019, the arrears that were paid two years ago have not been paid. They just paid some and left the rest, the money has been swindled.

So, our advice to this regime is to allow universities to run on their own and provide funds that should come from government; funds from TETFund should be well managed as, today, it’s being managed by politicians.

The funds should be restructured in such a way that it should be well managed that every university gets what is due to it. And parents and students are still contributing.

When you put these three together and government gives at least 15 to 17 percent of the budget to education, we will have all issues gone. How do you rate the Buhari’s administration in terms of funding of education? It was catastrophic, that was the worst thing that even happened to this country.

There is no regime ever that gave five percent to education, but it did and even that five percent was not monitored. Under that regime, University of Lagos, University of Ibadan, Obafemi Awolowo University and ABU got just N11 million per month for overhead cost.

Meanwhile, my university (Michael Okpara University of Agriculture Umudike) spent more than N20 million on diesel a month, UNILAG should spend not less than N50 million to N100 million on diesel a month but government just gave N10 million, here they gave N5 million and it was hardly released.

The take-home of one senator is more than, if you combine Ibadan and Ife together, what you have in those universities as overhead cost. Nigerian universities has nothing to do with inter-union but with how to deal with the government and we expect that all unions should go and fight for what is due to their members, don’t say “give me what you gave ASUU”.

The problem is not the union, the problem is the government and the management of the university system. But there is the impression that sharing formula among the four university-based unions is the bone of contention.

ASUU has been accused of hijacking Earned Allowances and taking a bigger chunk of it… Union A doesn’t negotiate for Union B. Every union negotiates for its members; so if you go for negotiation and get something, other unions should not accuse you of hijacking anything but you can also go to government and ask for something different, you can even ask for more than what they gave to ASUU.

ASUU cannot go and fight and towards the end receives one hundred million naira for its members then you come and say that ASUU hijacked everything, go and fight for your members, don’t look at ASUU. We don’t take people’s things, we meet with government; we reach agreement on what should come to our members. It’s your duty, if you know that what is given to your members is too small, go and tell them you “reject what your are giving to us”, it is not “what you give ASUU, give us our own”.

You should not be fighting as if you are fighting ASUU. How do you look at some of those appointed by government in the University Governing Boards? Well, what we are seeing in Nigeria is that it has been politicized.

Rather than appoint competent people, past Vice Chancellors, past Registrars, and past Bursars into Council, you are appointing politicians. And for politicians, it’s a juicy job so they are going to look for something, that’s the problem.

So, we do hope that this regime should… we are not saying that Councils have been dissolved because we have a law. But in future when you want to appoint Council members, you should do it in such a way that those who are appointed are people who should have an impact on the system, who can bring money to the system and not come to collect money from the system, that’s the role of Council. Source for funds for the system and not to come and collect the little you have in the system.

Suspected kidnappers terrorising some parts of North West have demanded N4 million in ransom for the release of one of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members kidnapped in Zamfara State.

On Friday, armed gunmen reportedly kidnapped eight members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) along a highway in Zamfara State.

The graduates were alleged­ly traveling in an Akwa Ibom Transport Company (AKTC) bus from Uyo, Akwa Ibom, to Sokoto State to participate in the mandated national service when their vehicle was stopped.

Emmanuel Etteh, the father of one of the victims, Glory Thomas, confirmed the latest development to an online medi­um, in a telephone conversation on Friday.

Etteh said the bandits called with their number to inform him about the abduction of his daughter and asked him to pay N4 million to secure her release.

“They called me with their line; they asked me to pay N4 million. I spoke with my daugh­ter because I asked how they wanted us to pay; she said we should contact the AKTC,” the troubled father said.

“Since that time, they have not called and I have not spoken with my daughter. I don’t know if they have released them but my daughter has not called me.”

The police command in Zamfara State has not passed any comment on the abduc­tion.

However, a military source who preferred anonymity had earlier confirmed the bandits’ ransom demands, adding that a rescue team is currently comb­ing the forest in order to rescue the victims unhurt.