Following the raging insecurity in Niger State, the National Youth Service Corps did not post corps members to11 out of the 25 local government areas in Niger State.
This was revealed by the Director, National Orientation Agency (NOA) Niger State chapter, Hamza Audu.
Audu spoke when a monitoring team from the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management visited the state to take data of pupils and cooks, also known as vendors under the Home Grown School Feeding Programme of the Federal Government.
According to him, due to the insecurity in the state, the NYSC decided not to deploy corps members to 11 local governments that are prone to bandits’ attacks.
“We are using the locals in concerned schools, who are conversant with their environment in order not to put the lives of NYSC members at risk”, he said.
Meanwhile, Hajiya Fatima Bisalla, who led the monitoring team from the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management said that the visit was to help the ministry to generate data on the beneficiaries of the programme in the state.
“The Federal Government wants to know the accurate number of pupils and cooks in each state before we scale up the programme to include more pupils in September.
“The team is satisfied with what it had seen on ground in Niger in connection with the records presented by the state on the school feeding programme,” she stated.