Sad, As Anambra Polytechnic Is Yet To Produce NYSC Accredited Graduates, 16 Years After Establishment -By Sandra Ijeoma Okoye

It is not a misnomer to say that it is sad that Anambra State Polytechnic, Ngbakwu, Awka-North Local Government Area, is yet to produce graduates that are qualified for the mandatory National Service under the auspices of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), 16 years after its establishment.

The disappointing and sad situation was divulged at the Budget Bilateral Talks between the Anambra State House of Assembly Committee on Tertiary Education and officials of the Anambra State Polytechnic led by the head of the institution, Dr. Njideka Chiekezie.

Dr. Chiekezie said the polytechnic requires aggressive funding to meet her accreditation requirements to enable the institution produce graduates who would also be enlisted in the one year compulsory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme.

Chiekezie, who took over the leadership of the polytechnic recently, said the situation she met was not palatable and that it was not her making. According to her, frantic efforts were been made to ensure that the students graduate and also embark on National Service.

She lays emphasis on the fact that the polytechnic aggressively require accreditation of academic programmes to enable the students go for national youth service after graduation.

She expressed deep concern that the HND programmes of the polytechnic were not accredited; a development she said was the remote reason students that graduated from the institution were not enrolled in the National Youth Service Scheme.

According to her, there was need to set up the required blocks for the students to graduate and get enlisted into the NYSC scheme of the Federal Government, stressing that accreditations of programmes offered in the institution were the only solution to the age-long problem.

She said at the moment, budgets approved for the polytechnic only covered payment of salaries, overheads and similar items, but did not take care of accreditation of programmes because accreditation, according to her, was capital intensive and done as a separate budget.

She said: “In order for us to obtain this accreditation, it requires the uplifting of the infrastructures in the school. What we need is listed in our capital budget. So, if we see fund for accreditation, there will be a change in infrastructures.

“We need engineering workshops, classroom blocks and we also desire to introduce more courses in our school but because we don’t have enough buildings to accommodate these courses, we are handicapped. So we are in dire need of classroom blocks and other infrastructures in the polytechnic.“

Against the foregoing disclosures, it is expedient to say that not few youths that graduated from various tertiary institutions in the country, with the exception of Colleges of Education, dream of participating in National Service in anticipation of being awarded the NYSC certificate. Given the foregoing, it is expedient to ask, “Is the NYSC programme important?

The answer to the foregoing cannot be farfetched as the NYSC programme is important, particularly as not few undergraduates look forward to the mandatory service because of the unique experience it offers, and which also gives them the opportunity to be imbued with the virtues of patriotism and loyalty to the country. In fact, most youths in Nigeria never get the opportunity to find out about diverse cultures across the communities in the country, except through participation in the National Service programme.

In fact, analyzed from the fact that most of the courses been offered in the institution are unaccredited, and by implication automatically disqualified its graduates from participating in the annual compulsory service under the auspices of the NYSC, it would not be out of place to say in this context that the school authority has for the past 16 years been toying with the future of the youths that graduated from the polytechnic.

The reason for the foregoing view cannot be farfetched as youths that graduated from the polytechnic are constraint in the labor market as it will unarguably be difficult for HND holders from the polytechnic to secure jobs without the NYSC Certificate to boost their employability as they are likely not positioned to secure decent jobs due to the high regard placed on the certificate by employers of labor across the country.

Not only does anyone that is deprived of NYSC Certification is limited in the labor market, as he or she is limited in the labor market, such person can be stigmatized , ridiculed and scorned for not participating in the NYSC exercise.

Against the foregoing backdrop, not few Nigerians will easily forget the convoluted hullabaloo that revolves around the forgery of NYSC Certificate which the former Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun was engrossed in. Though she was in 2021 cleared by a Federal High Court in Abuja of the alleged certificate forgery, which resulted in her eventual resignation from office in 2018. In fact, her resignation over the NYSC certificate controversy followed series of relentless news coverage on the matter for some months and some court cases against her and the NYSC.

In fact, the importance of the NYSC Certificate cannot be watered down as its importance goes beyond the labor market, given the fact that it is highly needed in the realm of partisan politics.

Given the importance of the NYSC Service, I am in this context appealing to the authorities of the polytechnic, and the State Government under the leadership of Prof. Charles Chukwuma Soludo to ensure that the polytechnic is adequately funded to enabled the accreditation of its courses so that its products would be able to be participating in the NYSC programme after 16 years of its establishment. The reason for the foregoing cannot be farfetched as not doing that will be a damaging disservice to the students that opted to pass through the polytechnic.