By Grace Udofia
Governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi has advised President Muhamadu Buhari to explore the possibility of recruiting more security personnel from the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to beef up security in the country.
Fayemi disclosed this in Ibadan while delivering the seventh lecture series to mark the 2021 annual birthday ceremony of Babatunde Oduyoye, the Special Adviser to Governor Seyi Makinde on Political Affairs.
He noted that the easiest way to achieve this is to amend the law setting up the NYSC.
According to the governor, turning to NYSC camps to recruit willing and able graduates to join the military and police, will not only be less expensive for the government, but will be a fast way to have more security personnel.
He said, “With this, we can use the existing orientation camps to train willing and able graduates to reflate the security personnel under a special arrangement that will be worked out.
“That way, the fund that is currently deployed to the NYSC can be used with just some additional funding, which could be sourced through a national emergency fund for the next five to 10 years.
“Those who cannot join the military services can serve in their community without pay if we must still retain the NYSC for everyone.”
He further explained that the step was necessary and a cheaper way to get the 200,000 security personnel needed by Nigeria to tackle its worsening insecurity.
“By available statistics, we need a minimum of 200,000 personnel to boost the fighting power of our men.
“This number is very large and a potential financial and logistic nightmare.
“Yet, we cannot delay any further. The ungoverned spaces needed to be closed up quickly by motivated men with the singular objective to save the nation; that takes us to the number two issue of financing and arming large recruitment.
“There are two things that we need to address quickly” to bring the current wave of insecurity to a halt.
“We need to have a conversation on how we can recruit a large number of people to join the police and the military, even on a short service,” he added.
