Alhaji Hamisu Abubakar, Bauchi state Coordinator, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), has advocated for one indivisible Nigeria, whose defining features would be unity and peaceful co-existence.
Abubakar made the call at the state’s NYSC orientation camp at Wailo village, on Saturday, during the celebration of the organisation’s 48th anniversary coupled with orientation cultural carnival for the 2021 Batch A Stream II corps members in the camp.
Speaking ahead of the commencement of the cultural carnival, Abubakar described this year’s carnival as a unique one as it coincided with the organisation’s 48 years of existence.
According to him, NYSC was very keen on the unity of the country, hence the display of placards by the corps members in different platoons at the occasion, advocating for unity and peace among all and sundry in Nigeria.
He said that the carnival would add more colour to the celebration as the anniversary sought to strengthen the scheme and to remind Nigerians that they were an indivisible nation.
“We believe that the cultural display of different cultural heritage by corps members today will go a long way in reminding Nigerians that we live in an indivisible country.
“From the placards displayed, when we say NYSC is for the unity of Nigeria, we are not only making a display but equally coming under the umbrella of the NYSC, all corps members, during the service year and beyond, are expected to shun any act that will divide us.
“It is also for all corps members to know that NYSC is for the unity of this great country. Whatever we are doing, we should put this great nation first,” he said.
Also speaking, Mr Sebastian Josiah, Head of Man ‘O’ war at the orientation camp, cited NYSC as the largest organisation that brings Nigerians of diverse religion, culture and ethnic orientation under one roof.
He said such an organisation or scheme should be sustained, rather than be scrapped.
“Some of these corpers have never been to Bauchi before, they have not been up North and they schooled in their various states.
“If you move people like that up North, they now see that what they hear in the news is totally different from what is on ground here.
“They discover that apart from the issue of insecurity we are hearing, the people are very accommodating.
“We have people from different ethnic groups, different religions and they have been staying in the same hostel and we have not had cases of people fighting over religion or ethnic differences.
“NYSC is the only gathering where you have people of such a background staying for three weeks and you don’t have issues of people dragging over religion and tribe. I think it should be sustained,” he said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that cultural dances, poem recitations were some of the activities at the cultural carnival marking the scheme’s 48th anniversary.
Others included a procession of corps members displaying placards in support of Nigeria’s unity as well as songs.(NAN)