rejoinder: a corper’s letter to his parents*

By Ufok Etukudo

The Sunray Newspaper January 28, 1993

In the above article, which appeared in your daily newspaper of January 20, 1993, Yushau alleged that “as corruption and indiscipline are rife in the country, so it was in camp. For instance, there were those beautiful damsels who caught the fancy of some officials. I didn’t know the game they were playing until most of them got posted to oil companies and financial houses.” This is not a serious thought by any means. As a matter of fact, it would have been ridiculous to deny some girls’ postings to oil companies and financial houses because young Yushau termed them ‘beautiful damsels’. Again, he has given the word ‘corruption’ a corrupted meaning. You see, what is beautiful in the eyes of Yushau can be plain dizziness in someone else’s eyes. That the beautiful ones were posted to favoured places presupposes that the “ugly” ones got the short end of the stick. Where are the “ugly” ones? He wouldn’t say where they are, or better still, who the ones in his presupposed category are.

The truth is that, every corps member has to be posted somewhere irrespective of beauty or facial constitution. It may  interest you to know that even the oil companies do have needs for corps members with disciplines other than engineering. Corps members with english, administration, accountancy and languages as their majors, are not uncommon to be absorbed in the oil companies.

The policy of the NYSC is to post corps members to their areas of specialization and on requests. And, if for obvious reason, the requests are filled, it is not that uncommon for any corps member to be sent to perform a duty other than what he or she had been trained for, but, within the ability of the graduate. As a matter of policy, a deliberate attempt is made at posting, so that each group of corps members posted to an organisation is, as much as practicable, a reflection of the society.

UFOK Etukudo is the Senior Information Officer

NYSC Secretariat , Delta State

Please click and read the reference article Corper's Letter