Corps members lured to troubled states with cash .

The National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, yesterday warned corps members not to report to any of the troubled northern states despite monetary inducements by the state governments.

The affected states are Borno, Adamawa and Yobe where further posting of corps members have been suspended over security concerns

A state of emergency has been in force in the states for over 13 months due to sustained attacks by the Boko Haram sect.

NYSC authorities said that corps members who flouted the directive were on their own and should be ready to face the consequences of their actions.

NYSC Director-General, Brig.-Gen. Johnson Olawumi, who spoke at the Annual Management Conference of the scheme in Calabar yesterday said that the stand of the management followed the discovery that some stubborn corps members posted outside these violence-prone states found their way there to make quick money offered by state governments.

According to him, until normalcy returns to the three states, NYSC will not post graduates of tertiary educational institutions there.

Olawumi stressed that the scheme was not ready to lose a corps member on national assignment to the activities of Boko Haram as witnessed in the past few years.

“The NYSC is mindful of the security situation in the country. The states where we have security challenges we will deliberately not post corps members there. But any corps member who deliberately goes there to serve on volunteerism, does that on his or her own because we do not officially send corps members to those troubled states.

“I want to emphasise that those three states are part of Nigeria. Our prayer is that peace returns to those places as soon as possible so that corps members who want to explore those places would have the opportunity of doing so,” the DG said.

He maintained that the focus of the NYSC programme now, given the high level of unemployment in the country, was how to make corps members become self-employed after undergoing training in Integrated Entrepreneurship Development, IED, facilitated by the management.

Chairman of NYSC Governing Board, Chief Gordon Bozimo, said in the last 41 years, the body had contributed meaningfully to Nigeria’s socio-economic development and had undergone transformation, which had impacted positively on the image of the country.

Bozimo noted that under his leadership, the board had taken steps to add value to the operation of the scheme through “constructive engagement of state governments for sustainable development of physical infrastructure at the orientation camps and provision of other statutory support to the scheme.”

Meanwhile, the killings in the Northern Senatorial District of Plateau State continued yesterday as 19 people died in an early morning attack.

Our correspondent gathered that four officers of the Special Task Force, STF, responsible for the maintenance of peace in the state, were among the victims.

According to reports, some of the villages attacked by the gunmen include Gako and Tanjol in Riyom Local Government Area of the state.

National Mirror learnt that the four task force members were killed while trying to resist the attack.

Residents of the area said the attackers came in the early hours of the day, shooting sporadically which later resulted to the causality, while farm produce and properties were destroyed.

The state Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, Dominic Esin, confirmed the incident.

He said six people were killed and five others injured were now receiving treatment in hospital.

The police PPRO said the attackers came around 1am yesterday.

However, he said the state police command was not aware of the killing of any of its officers, adding that investigation into the incident was ongoing to arrest the culprits.

Esin also said that normalcy had returned to the affected areas, urging the public to go about their lawful business and report any unscrupulous elements to the security agencies.