Adebayo Shittu Sues NYSC, Says I Wasn’t Called-Up For Youth Service

Mr. Adebayo Shittu, the Minister of Communications, has dragged the National Youth Service Corps to court, for failing to sent him a call-up letter that would have enabled him take part in the mandatory service in 1979.

Shittu, through his lawyer, Mr Olalekan Ojo (SAN), filed the suit marked FHC/IB/CS/111/2018 before the Federal High Court in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.

The  Director General, NYSC; the Oyo State Coordinator, NYSC; the NYSC and the Attorney General of the Federation were all joined in the suit.

This is coming after the minister sued the All Progressive Congress (APC) for screening him out of those contesting the governorship primaries election of the party in Oyo State.

Shittu prayed the court to pronounce that the NYSC had truncated his obligation to serve 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.

But relying on Section 2(1) of the National Youth Service Corps Act, 1973, Shittu, who read Law from the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, and graduated in 1978, contended that his failure to serve should be blamed on the NYSC.

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

In the alternative, he wants the court to order the NYSC to issue to him an Exemption Certificate in view of his service as a lawmaker in Oyo State.

Shittu 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.”