The Minister of
Communications, Adebayo Shittu, has charged the National Youth Service Corps,
to court for allegedly not inviting him to serve. He claimed that the body
failed to serve him with a call-up letter in 1979 to enable him to observe the
mandatory one-year national youth service, while he was still below the age of
30.
The minister filed the suit
marked FHC/IB/CS/111/2018 before the Federal High Court in Ibadan, the Oyo
State capital, through his lawyer, Mr Olalekan Ojo (SAN). Joined as defendants
in the suit are Director General, NYSC; the Oyo State Coordinator, NYSC; the
NYSC and the Attorney General of the Federation.
The minister is begging the
court to proclaim that the NYSC had waived his obligation to observe the
one-year compulsory service by allegedly failing to serve him with a call-up
letter in 1979 after he finished from the Nigerian Law School.
The suit is coming after
Shittu’s disqualification from Oyo State governorship race by his party, the
All Progressives Congress. Recall that the party had screened him out of its
governorship primary in Oyo State after it became known that Shittu skipped the
compulsory national youth service.
But relying on Section 2(1)
of the National Youth Service Corps Act, 1973, Shittu, who read Law from the
University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, and graduated in 1978,
contended that his failure to serve should be blamed on the NYSC.
He is urging the court to
declare that “the possession of the NYSC Discharge or Exemption Certificate is
not one of the requirements for the appointment of the plaintiff as a Minister
of the Federal Republic of Nigeria or for his election as a state Governor or
as a senator, pursuant to sections 147, 177 and 65 of the Constitution of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria.”
Shittu prayed the court to
permanently restrain the NYSC and the other defendants from calling upon him to
serve under the NYSC scheme “or from imposing any liability on or making the
plaintiff to suffer any liability, be it civil or criminal, on account of his
purported non-service under the NYSC scheme.”
He also urged the court to
order the NYSC to issue to him a Certificate of National Service, “having
served the nation as member of the Oyo State House of Assembly immediately
after graduating from the Nigerian Law School,” or order the NYSC to issue to
him an Exemption Certificate as a lawmaker in Oyo State.
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