Nigerian singer, actor, and politician, Bankole Wellington popularly known as Banky W has stated why he thinks the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) should be optional.
Banky W made this assertion during an interview with Channels television.
According to him, the NYSC program doesn’t achieve everything it was designed for since its existence.
I don’t know if there is anybody that will disagree that NYSC, today, probably does not achieve everything it was originally designed for so how do we reform it, don’t cancel it, can we say maybe instead of being a mandatory program, let’s excite it from the constitution and make it optional, and then if that’s the case, the people who don’t need it will go.
Now the people who are remaining, you can pay them more so instead of paying them 30thousand naira a month which does nothing, for a young person. In today’s Nigeria, we can pay them 60 or 70 or 80k,” he said.
In 2018, Wellington revealed his political aspirations to run for the Lagos’ Eti-Osa Federal Constituency seat in Nigeria’s House of Representatives, under the platform of the Modern Democratic Party (MDP), formed in 2017. Unfortunately, he lost the Election to Babajide Obanikoro of the All Progressive Congress.
The singer turned politician is currently running for the same seat under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ahead of the 2023 election.
