Nigerian Senate on Tuesday passed for second reading, the Nigerian Peace Corps (Establishment) Bill sponsored by Senator Mohammed Ali Ndume.
The bill had in the 8th National Assembly gone through all the legislative processes and was passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives but President Muhamnadu Buhari withheld assent on economic grounds.
Senator Ndume, who sponsored the bill in the 8th Senate, re- sponsored it in the current 9th Senate for reasons he said bordered on youth employment and tackling of insecurity at the grassroots.
In his lead debate on the bill, Senator Ndume said: “The core mandate being sought by the Nigerian Peace Corps ( Establishment ) Bill, is to develop, empower and provide gainful employment for the youth to facilitate peace, volunteerism, community services, neighbourhood watch, Nation-building and for other related matters”.
He explained that the bill when passed into law, would give statutory backing to the existing Peace Corps of Nigeria which currently has over 187,000 members with a well-structured network of branches across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory.
He further advised that since the youths based on statistics provided by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) accounts for 55.9% of the Nigerian population with a staggering unemployment rate of 27.1%, giving the Peace corps legal status, will help a lot in solving the problem of unemployment and attendant vices.
According to him, “From the core mandate and functions of Peace Corps as contained in part 1, section 2 of this bill, the Nigerian Peace Corps, when established, besides engaging millions of our unemployed youths on a permanent basis, has the capacity of complementing the functions of conventional security agencies.”
Following a unanimous affirmative voice vote, President of the senate Ahmad Lawan thereafter mandated the Committee on Interior, to further work on the bill and report back in four weeks.
Zainab Sa’id
