Nigeria Content Online

Next week’s
governorship and house of assembly elections in Katsina State are under
threat following the mass displacement of National Youth Service Corps
members from their various places of primary assignment.

The corps members,
numbering about 500, had to be evacuated from several local governments
in the state where they had been serving as presiding officers in the
ongoing general elections.

The rescue
operation by security agencies which has continued since Wednesday,
April 20, was necessitated by the violence which erupted in the state
following last week’s presidential elections.

In Daura local
government, the home town of the presidential candidate of the Congress
for Progressive Change (CPC), Muhammadu Buhari, at least 100 corps
members were escorted by fully armed soldiers in seven hired commercial
buses to the NYSC orientation camp in Katsina, the state capital. The
army’s response arose after the lodgings of some corps members,
including several churches and shops of non-indigenes, were totally
razed.

“We have lost all
our belongings. Everything we had is gone,” said Wale Odusanya, who
shared the burnt lodge, provided by the Local Government Education
Authority, with seven other corps members.

“I don’t have anything. All my money, ATM cards, everything gone. We don’t know what to do.”

Threat of no elections

The chaos
reverberating across the state saw corps members in their hundreds also
fleeing Funtua, Musawa, Bakore, and several other local governments for
the NYSC camp. At the camp, corps members told the Commanding Officer
of the Nigerian Army 35 Battalion, Emmanuel Etuka, a lieutenant
colonel; the Katsina State Commissioner of Police, Ibrahim Mohammed;
the Director of the State Security Service; and other NYSC officials
that they would not take part in the governorship elections scheduled
for April 26.

“No more elections.
We are going home. Home sweet home. We are not doing any more,” chanted
the corps members as they made their displeasure known.

“I cannot stay in a
place where people want to kill me for no reason. They said the problem
is political, yet they have being targeting corpers. Here at Funtua,
innocent people have being burnt alive and they are saying we should go
back. Never. I am not going,” said a corps member who gave her name as
Cynthia, as she went to collect a mattress from the camp store.

Mr. Etuka and heads of other security agencies however assured the corps members of their security in the camp and afterwards.

“Your security was
threatened far above what we could guarantee. That is why we have
brought you here until normalcy returns and you can go back. Your
safety is our concern and we‘ll ensure you remain safe,” Mr. Etuka said.