By Lilian Hosea, Abuja
The Yobe State government was reluctantly forced to relocate the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Orientation Camp from its proposed site at the Leadership and Citizenship Training Center in Fika, Fika Local Government to Dazigau in Nangere Local Government in order to boost education, a source who craved for anonymity has informed Neptune Prime.
The state governor, Honourable Mai Mala Buni, had in his inaugural address on the 29th of May, 2019, declared a state of emergency in primary and secondary education in the state and he followed that up by hosting an education summit on the 1st of July following which a technical committee was set up under the chairmanship of Professor Malah Daura, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Maiduguri.
Not done with that, the governor went on to provide Foreign Scholarships for 500 undergraduate and 200 post graduate students.
Some of the recommendations of the committee was a manpower audit to screen all teaching staff across the state, authenticate their certificates and the forms or types of formal training they had gone through and also to conduct basic, general and professional competency tests on teachers in the state.
The audit is still on, however the committee saddled with that responsibility is appalled at the shallowness of most teachers on ground and so the use of youth corps members has become very necessary.
The problem with that, according to Neptune Prime’s source, is that because there is a wrongly perceived view outside Yobe that the Fika site may be prone to Boko Haram attacks, most corps members deployed to the state seek for redeployment which is a great loss to the state in terms of harnessing cheap and available manpower and and enhancing national unity and integration.
The misconception is not helped by the fact that for nearly twenty years the NYSC in Yobe has been crying for a permanent site.
In April this year, Mrs. Grace J. Adzer, the state coordinator of the NYSC in Yobe State, had to appeal to the state government to consider building a permanent orientation camp to enable it (NYSC) discharge its work conveniently.
According to her, provision of the permanent orientation camp would go a long way in easing the operations of the NYSC as well as stopping inconveniences experienced at the temporary orientation Camp at College of Administrative and Business Studies (CABS), Potiskum. She said “our greatest challenge is lack of permanent orientation camp in Yobe State”.
The NYSC has been operating at the temporary orientation camp in Potiskum town for over 20 years thus disrupting the academic calendar of the institution.
These, all cumulatively, informed the decision to build a permanent site in another location.
It will be recalled that Government Model Boarding Primary School, Dazigau, in Nangere Local Government Area, has been designated as the permanent NYSC Orientation Camp and work has already been started.
The model primary school is one of 17 such schools started by the late governor Mamman B. Ali which have been abandoned to housing rodents, serpents and miscreants.
Gypsum Processing Factory For Fika
Concerned with the feeling of the people of Fika over the “loss” of the NYSC Orientation Camp, our source revealed to us that Governor Buni has a plan to establish a Gypsum Processing Plant in Fika, among other developmental projects, “which will be more beneficial to the people than a seasonal NYSC Camp that has not really been there”.
Fika has a very large deposit of highly graded Gypsum. Gypsum is used in cement manufacturing, Plaster of Paris (PoP) and chalk production among others.
It is believed such projects would serve the communities more through employment and business opportunities as well as infrastructural development.
Governor Buni Off To Turkey
Meanwhile, Governor Mai Mala Buni will attend the 4th Istanbul Public Private Partnership [PPP] Week scheduled to take place between 30th October and 2nd November 2019.
The governor, who left yesterday night via Abuja, is already in Istanbul, Turkey.
Under the theme “Boost PPP Together: Resilient Infrastructure”, the 4-day event is organized by the Istanbul PPP Centre of Excellence [PPPCoE], the Islamic Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation to bring together government and the private sector to discuss and network on infrastructure and investment financing using the PPP model.
Governor Buni will use the event to canvass for significant private sector investment in Yobe State, including in agriculture, solid minerals and renewable energy.
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