Minister Shittu goes after NYSC

The Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, is demanding that the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) be compelled to issue him an exemption certificate for the compulsory one year service he missed in 1979.

The minister demanded for the exemption certificate in a suit he filed against NYSC before an Ibadan Federal High Court.

Shittu has also earlier dragged the APC to court for disqualifying him from the governorship primary election since he did not have an NYSC certificate.

Shittu alleged in the suit filed by his lawyer, Olalekan Ojo, SAN, 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 suit is marked FHC/IB/CS/111/2018, with the Director General, NYSC, the Oyo State Coordinator, NYSC, the NYSC and the Attorney General of the Federation joined as defendants.

The minister, in the suit, urged the court to declare 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.

Relying on Section 2(1) of the National Youth Service Corps Act, 1973, Shittu, contended that his failure to serve should be blamed on the NYSC.

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The minister, who studied law at the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, prayed 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.”

He also prayed the court to perpetually 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 is also praying court to order the NYSC to issue to him a Certificate of National Service, “having served the nation as a member of the Oyo State House of Assembly immediately after graduating from the Nigerian Law School.”

It will be recalled that Shittu, who was an aspirant for the office of governor of Oyo State on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, APC, was disqualified from contesting the primary election of the party by the party’s screening committee.

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