Fadah, who is from Yobe State like Lawan, took over from Major General Shuaibu Ibrahim in May 2022 after his two-year tenure.
The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme may spin into a rapid decline unless urgent actions are taken to contain the excesses of its recently appointed Director-General, Brigadier General Mohammed Fadah, whom workers in the agency have accused of being a stooge of the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan.
Fadah, who is from Yobe State like Lawan, took over from Major General Shuaibu Ibrahim in May 2022 after his two-year tenure.
Sources said he was nominated as Director General of the NYSC by Lawan ahead of his presidential ambition with plans to use the NYSC as a conduit pipe to fund his election.
Though he was announced as the consensus candidate by the All Progressives Congress national chairman, Senator Abdullahi Adamu, the Senate President lost the primary to former Lagos State Governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
“Lawan handpicked Fadah, both from Yobe State, to secure himself access to NYSC’s funding for the purpose of bankrolling his presidential bid. The Senate President did not win the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential primary, to which he would have directed the NYSC funds.
“Remember youth corps members will also be involved in the election, they already thought he would be the APC candidate, so he was nominated so as to act their biddings,” a source alleged.
Some workers in the NYSC who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being punished told SaharaReporters that Brigadier Fadah “is indiscriminate in what subhead he moves money from as long as he is able to pull out cash.”
They accused the new DG of corruption, nepotism and marginalisation.
“Our fear is that if he stays on in this position, things will get bad such that his eventual successor will not know where to start repairing from. The new DG (Director General) has practically overridden all safeguards and financial control measures in the last few weeks that have been institutionally entrenched for transparency and accountability.
“He abuses travel allowances and even the petty cash for the office of the DG. He corners projects and contracts, which would even put some staff in trouble because of serial breaches of procurement law. Remember we have people in camps now, so many projects and contracts were recently awarded out,” one of the workers said.
Meanwhile, other sources within the scheme have accused the DG of undermining legacy programmes of the NYSC under the guise of introducing reforms.
They are particularly concerned that he is taking the scheme in a different direction that would make recent efforts at reforming it go to waste.
“If you know what he is doing to skill acquisition of corps members, you can clearly see that the scheme is derailing. It is not even in tandem with the direction charted by our parent ministry, and it is also not following what we have been doing to make the NYSC execute its mandate,” another worker said.
They made it known that the forceful change of direction being imposed by the new DG is meant to benefit him financially, noting that “General Fadah has started taking monies for development of the NYSC for personal use. In less than two months of resumption, the man has taken millions of Naira. It is difficult for NYSC to grow or even fulfil its mandate under such leadership.”
“It is the way things operate in this country; the DG has to give returns to his benefactors. What we gathered is that Fadah was supposed to leverage NYSC’s funds to finance his benefactor’s presidential ambition, which unfortunately or fortunately failed when he lost the primary election.”
Efforts made by SaharaReporters to get Eddy Megwa, Director, Press and Public Relations of the NYSC for comments were not successful as he neither answered the calls nor returned them. He also did not reply to a text message sent to him.