No Service for Pregnant women, Nursing Mothers and PG Students

Some folks just got a ‘Service unavailable’ notification. The NYSC has said that pregnant women, nursing mothers and students pursuing postgraduate degrees would not be mobilized into the Youth Corps until they can serve effectively.

The Director-General of the NYSC, Brig-Gen. Johnson Olawumi, stated this at the 2015 Batch ‘B’ Pre-Mobilization workshop which was held in Kaduna recently. He said that pregnant women, nursing mothers, and post-graduate students are exempted from national service because they would not be able to undergo the four cardinal programmes of the NYSC.

The DG stressed that the four cardinal programmes are a prerequisite for the Certificate of National Service. The four cardinal programmes include mobilisation, orientation, primary assignment and winding-up passing out parade. He noted that this group of people are usually absent from some of these programmes, especially orientation, only to resurface for posting to their PPA or even the Passing out Parade.

It has been mentioned how pregnant corpers give excuses for not taking part in important NYSC functions. This is from a Facebook forum:

Even after the posting, most pregnant corpers “never attend CDs meetings,they’ll always say the CDs days coincide with their anti natal appointments. … Do you think the NYSC should draft a SPECIAL rule/regulations for these women?”

It should be noted that once they feel they can fully participate in the National Service they can apply to be mobilized.