By Yashim Katurak
Abuja – Brig.-Gen. Suleiman Kazaure, the Director-General, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), has charged scheduled officers to adopt a standard selection process for the NYSC annual honours awards.
Kazaure gave the task on Monday in Abuja at the commencement of a two-day nationwide training for its schedule officers to improve the standard of the selection process.
He said while declaring the 2017 Citation Writers’ Workshop open that the training was imperative as the process has been handled poorly over the years.
Kazaure said the process had progressively diminished in quality over the years thereby lowering the significance and value of the lofty achievements of award winners.
He said this had led to complaints and protests by aggrieved Corps members against the process, saying that the training will help the scheme to properly manage and reduce these complaints.
“Management has observed with great concern that citation writing as important as it is to the honours and merit award programme, is being poorly handled by schedule officers.
“The quality of the process has progressively diminished over the years; the natural but negative outcome of this trend is lowering of the significance and value of the lofty achievements of the award winners.
“Given the above scenario, therefore, it has become imperative to organise training of this nature to equip the citation writers to the standard required for reporting on projects and accomplishments of award recipients which form the bedrock for the final selection process.
“The training will simulate aptitude and sharpen the skills of our schedule officers on citation writing and avail them the opportunity of keying into global trends in the style, format and methods of flawless writing,” Kazaure said.
He said the training would also strengthen interpersonal skills and competencies of schedule officers.
According to him, this training will also educate officers on how to harmonise the system of providing adequate input on Corps members’ projects from the local government level to the final selection of award winners.
Earlier, Mrs Victoria Okakwu, the NYSC Director, Planning, Research and Statistics, said the last training held for schedule officers was in 2011, recalling that only 37 officers were trained that year.
Okakwu said the director-general approved the training of over 85 officers across the 36 states and the FCT, with the Nigeria Defence Headquarters (NDHQ) to cover the gap that existed.
According to her, the training is a direct response to the challenges observed during the 2016 National Selection Committee meeting.
The theme for the workshop is “Enhancing the Capacities of Citation Writers’’.
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