The Director General of the National Youth Service Corps, Brigadier General Shuaibu Ibrahim has disclosed that retrieval of NYSC archival materials will preserve the history of the Scheme.
The Director General, who is an Associate Professor made the disclosure during the sensitisation of staff and other critical stakeholders in Ondo State.
Speaking through the Assistant Director in the Ventures Management Department and a member of Retrieval of Archival Materials Committee at the Directorate Headquarters, Mr. Busari, Dauda Rauf, the Director General hinted that the Scheme has embarked on a promising journey to retrieve all the archival materials right from the inception of the Scheme in 1973.
According to General Ibrahim, the movement of headquarters of the Scheme from Lagos in 1992 to Area 3 in Abuja and finally to the permanent headquarters in Maitama District has made the Scheme to lose valuable archival materials.
"During this periods of movement, valuable archival materials were lost in transit which made it impossible for the Scheme to have a proper and documented records of some of her activities since inception".
To effect this novel idea, the NYSC boss who was recently honoured with the Fellowship of the Historical Society of Nigeria (FHSN) said that the management have made a special and passionate appeal to previous and retired managers and implementors of the Government youth development organisation.
"We have written to past Directors General and all retired Directors to see if those materials can be gathered and kept at a place that would serve as a monument of history and reference point for the generations yet unborn".
For a better coordination and successful implementation of this innovation, a committee headed by Mr. Dewan Stephen, Deputy Director, Research, Statistics and Library was put in place to harmonise how to achieve this mandate and to determine which of the artifacts and archival materials would be warehoused at the State Secretariats, Area Offices and the Directorate Headquarters in Abuja.
Accordingly, the 18th Chief Executive Officer of the noble Scheme has directed that mini-Museum be set up in all the 37 Secretariats including FCT and the six Area Offices located within each of the geopolitical zone of the country.
"This sensitisation is to inform and educate the staff and other critical stakeholders on what constitutes archival materials to be warehoused at the Area Offices, State Secretariats and what should be forwarded to the headquarters".
"The Area Offices and State Secretariats will set up Implementation Sub-Committee with representatives each from Planning, Research and Statistics (PRS); Community Development Service (CDS); Corps Inspection and Monitoring (CIM); Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED); Corps Discipline and Reward (CD&R) and Press and Public Relations Unit (PPRU).
The management according to the Director General has mapped out strategies on the best approach to adopt in order to achieve the set objectives.
He listed such ways to include donations which will occur through personal interactions and a promise to acknowledge source of artifacts on display as a motivation and reward mechanism for such donation; and outright purchase which will involve putting a price tag and negotiating for artifacts.
The NYSC helmsman mentioned loans and this could be achieved through sourcing and displaying for anniversary celebrations or other programmes of the Scheme after which it would be returned to the owner; and exchange in which artifacts can be exchanged between two Museums owned by either government, corporate and individuals.
The representative of the Director General said that the management has a 'strong conviction that every staff, serving or retired has a unique role to play in the ongoing efforts to make NYSC Library/Museum a place of choice for researchers and the general public'.
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