Director General of the National Youth Service Corps, Brig. Gen. Johnson Olawumi, on Thursday said despite the deadly attacks on corps members during the 2011 election, they will be deployed for election duties across the country during the 2015 election, Punch reports.
He made this disclosure in Ikare-Akoko, Ondo state during the inauguration of the 2014/2015 Batch ‘C’ corps members deployed to the state.
The director general who stated that the mistakes of 2011 would not be repeated assured the security of the lives of corps members that will participate in the electoral process during the February 14, 2015 general elections.
Olawumi also revealed that the the Federal Government and the Independent National Electoral Commission had sealed a deal to give room for corps members to participate during the elections.
He said, “The decision for corps members to take part in election was taken by government and for the simple reason that they are well dispersed all over the nooks and crannies of the country and I want to state categorically that since corps members have started taken part in elections in Nigeria, our elections have continued to gain credibility.
“The agreement between NYSC and INEC is still there and what that means is that corp members will take part in 2015 elections all over Nigeria whenever election will be held as long as there will be election, they will be part of it. However, I must state clearly that we are not sleeping, we are learning from our past mistakes, we have studied what happened in the last election and we have put measures in place for the safety and security of corp members.
“You can all recall what happened in Ekiti and in Osun, two elections that were adjudged to be very fair and corps members were particularly singled out and commended for all the roles they played in the elections, for this coming election they are eager to go but on our part we have put a lot of measures in place to guarantee their safety and security.”
