According to Eddy Megwa, Director of Press and Public Relations for the National Youth Service Corps, an investigative reporter was able to apply for the program twice by providing different details.
According to PUNCN Online, Umar Audu, an investigative reporter, disclosed how he completed the required one-year NYSC duty after receiving a degree from a Cotonou-based institution in less than six weeks.
Audu had described in his report how the site had recognized his first attempt to register using his old information and how the registration proceeded once he used a new email address and phone number.
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He said, “It appears that NYSC did not have a digital tool to identify attempts to engage in the scheme more than once.”
Megwa discussed the development and said that the undercover reporter was successful because he was “out for a particular purpose.” The NYSC was making efforts to make sure that this didn’t happen in the future.
It’s not that there aren’t safeguards in place to identify potential system intrusions. Due to his prior involvement in the plan, the system first rejected the undercover reporter’s data when he entered it. Later, he modified both his phone number and email address, which allowed the system to accept him. Additionally, Osun State was his original posting.
The reason he did that was because he had a specific goal in mind. He stated, “We are examining the circumstances and will make sure that it doesn’t happen again.
The NYSC spokeswoman added that the program carried out biometric and physical verification for graduates with foreign training, and that the integrated ICT system is “evolving” to be able to flag and detect repeated registrations.
“In this case, we don’t have a database that we utilize to evaluate the graduates with foreign training. We need them to provide us with their certificates and, of course, enter their information into our database.
“We will now invite them for physical verification after we review the information they have supplied on our system. And that’s when we verify if they did, in fact, graduate from the stated university or not,” he stated.
Megwa added that the program was working with the National Identity Management Commission to incorporate the usage of the NIN during registration, and that it would also be working with the Nigerian Immigration Service to stop passports from being improperly stamped.
In order to make sure that your NIN number is included in the registration procedure and that the system will still identify you even if you visit 20 times, we had also enrolled that three years prior.
In order to eliminate the practice of circumventing the Nigerian government by having their passports incorrectly stamped, he continued, “we also intend to collaborate with the Nigerian Immigration Service to synergize.”