At least 12 members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) have been reported killed and another five kidnapped in the last two years.

Innocent Ukpere and Victor Akpan, graduates of Mass Communication, were on their way to Katsina State when they suffered an accident and died. They were two of the five young graduates who died in the same accident.

Innocent and Victor were students of the Akwa Ibom State Polytechnic while the other three — Miracle Asuquo, Stella Ekikoh and Ezuruike Coleman — were graduates of University of Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. All of them were headed to Katsina from Uyo for the NYSC camp when their bus had an accident along Abuja-Abaji-Kwali Expressway on Wednesday, July 28.  

A week after their death, their bodies were transported home in a C-130 Nigerian Air Force aircraft.

NYSC is a mandatory one-year scheme created in a bid to reconstruct, reconcile and rebuild the country after the Nigerian Civil war. Usually, participants are posted to states they have never visited or are not native to.

Over the years, however, some corps members have lost their lives in accidents while travelling to camp or returning. Others to attacks while some have been kidnapped.

Most recently, four students of Osun State University, Osogbo were involved in an accident on Thursday. According to Ademola Adesoji, the institution’s PRO, three of the students, including the two who died, were heading for Kaduna, while the last was en route to Kano State.

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In April 2020, four corps members were involved in a road accident along Mokwa Road. They were admitted to the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH), Kwara State, where Brigadier General Shuaibu Ibrahim, the Director-General of, National Youth Service Corps, visited them.

On March 9, 2020, four corps members were kidnapped while on their way to the NYSC Orientation Camp, Gusau, in Zamfara State. They were however rescued two days later with the aid of repentant bandits.  

In December 2020, 17 corps members were attacked by armed robbers along Jere-Abuja Expressway.  One of them, Bomoi Yusuf, died in the attack.

On August 18, 2019, 12 corps members travelling to Funtua to attend a church programme had an accident and three of them died on the spot while the others sustained various degrees of injuries.

While travelling in 2019, Nuraddeen Tahir, a corps member who had just completed his 2019 Batch ‘B’ orientation course in Taraba State, and some of his colleagues had an accident that led to the amputation of his left arm.

Abraham Amuta Abah, another corpms member whose family lived in Jentan Mangoro in Jos, Plateau State, was abducted by Boko Haram insurgents in Borno State.