Assent to Peace Corps Bill as parting gift youths – National Commandant urges Buhari

The National Commandant of the Peace Corps of Nigeria (PCN), Professor Dickson Ameh Akoh has made a passionate appeal to President Muhammadu Buhari to assent to a Bill for an Act that would make the organisation a statutory body.

Addressing Newsmen in Abuja, Prof Akoh declared that assenting the Bill, President Buhari would bequeath “a lasting parting gift to the Nigerian youth and would be remembered for good” because it’s important to the nation’s youths in general.

The Bill for an Act to Establish the Nigerian Peace Corps (NPC) passed by the two Chambers of the National Assembly has been transmitted to President Buhari for assent.

While drumming support for President Buhari’s assent to the Bill, Akoh explained that its entire contents, especially the functions contained in the Bill was a summation of inclusive empowerment programmes for the youth and on how to harness their innate potentials for the over all tasks of nation-building.

According to him, “the passage of the Nigerian Peace Corps Bill is not only timely, reassuring and a renewed hope for the Nigerian youth, but also a pointer to the fact that the political elites is still very much conscious of the social challenges confronting the youth and therefore, passionate on proffering solutions to the challenges to same in order to place the youth in the front burner of our national life.

“Concerned with the increasing waves of unemployment and high level of poverty in the land, both past and present administrations initiated different intervention policies to mitigate these challenges.

“In the United States of America, for instance, the American Peace Corps was created as an agency to promote World Peace and Friendship by training American youths as volunteers to perform social and humanitarian services overseas, including Nigeria.

Prof Akoh who also debunked the claims in some quarters that the Organisation had opened a portal for recruitment exercise urged Nigerians to disregard such dubious characters as the Bill was yet to be assented by the President.