By Raphael Ede Enugu
Director-General, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Suleiman Kazaure, has urged corps members to shun unnecessary travels and night parties that may endanger their lives. Kazaure gave the warning yesterday while addressing NYSC 2017 Batch ‘A’ Stream 11 at NYSC Orientation Camp in Awgu, Enugu state. He also advised the Corps members to always respect their host communities while contributing their quota to the development of the communities and places of their primary assignments.
“You must be security conscious at all times; again, do not walk or live alone. Go in a group or pairs all the time and be your brother’s keeper,” he said. He urged the corps members to take the entrepreneur and skills acquisition lessons in the camp seriously, saying it would surely complement what they learned in By Martin Paul Abuja National Universities Commission (NUC), has bemoaned frivolous spending by vice-chancellors of federal universities and other non-degree awarding institutions and centres in country.
Executive Secretary of the Commission, Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, made the observation yesterday at the opening of meeting of NUC with bursars of federal universities and centres. Rasheed said a situation, where a vice-chancellor was drawing N400 million per annum as furniture allowance was unacceptable, noting that there was also variable salaries structure among the VCs. “Some vice-chancellors are earning up to N1million, while some are receiving over N1.2 million, there should be equilibrium, the circular authorising any action in the university system must be thoroughly studied and understood before implementation,” he said.
He said if there were disparities in earnings and expenditures, it would be diffi cult to explain when invited to explain at the Presidential Accounting Committee (PAC), stressing that this could lead to invitation by ICPC or EFCC. He said the meeting was called to brainstorm on the need for university bursars to study government circulars with a view to maintaining prudence, accountability and transparency in the disbursement of allocations to the universities. He said there was no way universities could have absolute autonomy, when 100 per cent of salaries were coming from the federal government, adding that “autonomy is limited if you cannot generate revenue to pay salaries.”
He said although the commission is the regulatory agency for universities, it did not generate circulars for the running of the system, adding: “NUC only convey circulars mostly coming from Offi ce of Accountant-General of the Federation.” Chairman, Association of Bursars of Federal Universities, Yahaya Hassan, in his remarks, noted the absence of adherent to established guidelines, rules and regulation in the management of funds in the system. He said accounting profession was centred on honesty, accountability and transparency, adding that “If we work prudently with vice-chancellors, we would save ourselves the trouble of EFCC.” school.
“My children, I will advise you to seize the opportunity provided by skill acquisition and entrepreneurship in this camp to have something doing instead of waiting to roam the streets looking for white-collar jobs, which are extremely diffi cult to fi nd. “Th e purpose of this noble scheme is to foster national unity and integration. So, I want you people to always work as a team and fi nd ways to do things and share ideas among each other, which will help to make our country great.” Earlier, the state Coordinator of the scheme, Ahmed Ikaka, lauded the newly mobilised corps members for being hardworking, intelligent and teachable.
Ikaka thanked the directorgeneral for supplying the camp clinic with drugs and health consumables. He said three federal health institutions had availed the clinic their professional manpower for 24 hours operation. He said water facility in the camp had been vandalised, making the camp to rely on borehole, adding that the development had resulted to the use of generator with the high cost of maintenance such as the purchase of diesel being a major challenge. Others are lack of electricity due to vandalism of power cables in the host community; lack of fencing giving hoodlums the access into the camp to steal installations after camping sessions and lack of functional vehicles. Th e coordinator said that presently, the camp had the capacity to host 3,000 corps members, if all its facilities were intact. Th e orientation opened on July 26, and will close on August 15.
