DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ANNUAL NYSC PET PROJECT - A CASE STUDY OF EBONYI STATE

ABSTRACT

          This project work is aimed at documenting the NYSC pet project information for the purpose of future record and access. Where by each new NYSC crop member can review any past work done by other past crops members. Nigerian University students are sent on a one year National youth service corps after their graduation from the university. The listforwarded by universities to NYSC Headquarter is registered for the purpose of sending call-up letter to the students and thereafter, does a presentable hand work project to be submitted to the committee, this research is to design andimplement an automated system for NYSC pet project registration. This will be of immense benefit to the administrators of the NYSC program as it will beeasier to sort out list from a particular university. Also, the system willenable proper documentation of graduates that participated in NYSC pet project program in a given year. The implementation of the automated system was carried out using Visual Basic and MS Access.

CHAPTER ONE

1.1 INTRODUCTION

          The NYSC pet project is and annual program organized by the NYSC among the corps members of each service year. A project that will be done and presented by each and every respective person or group of the NYSC corps members, as a community development service (CDS) project to that community project. The realities of today requires that Corps Members MUST acquire peculiar skills like Innovation, stakeholder analysis, fund raising, etc through active use of your weekly 8 hours for Personal Community Development Project. This will serve as a service learning platform for honing your skills and establishing your interest in a particular field.The Community Development Service (CDS) is aimed at harnessing the skills, creativity and innovativeness of Corps members. Corps members are expected to identified the needs of their host communities and mobilise members of their host communities to embark on the projects.

Through this programme, many Corps members were able to construct bridges, health care centres, classroom blocks, market stalls, culverts etc. they had also carried out projects like HIV sensitization, adult literacy campaign, extra-mural classes for students, road safety campaign etc. Corps members participate actively in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) through the War Against Poverty (WAP) programme of the scheme.

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

          The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is an organization set up by the Nigerian government to involve the country's graduates in the developmentof the country. There is no military conscription in Nigeria, but since 1973graduates of universities and later Polytechnics have been required to take part in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) program for one year.This is known as national service year."Corp" members are posted to cities far from their city of origin. They areexpected to mix with people of other tribes, social and family backgrounds, to learn the culture of the indigenes in the place they are posted to. Thisaction is aimed to bring about unity in the country and to help youthsappreciate other ethnic groups.There is an "Orientation" period of approximately three weeks spent in acamp away from family and friends. There is also a "passing out ceremony"at the end of the year and primary assignment followed by one month of vacation.

The program has also helped in creating entry level jobs for a lot of Nigerianyouth. An NYSC forum dedicated to the NYSC members was recently built to bridge the gap amongst members serving across Nigeria and also an avenue for coppers to share job information and career resources as well asgetting loans from the National Directorate of Employment.

Looking at Nigerian, NYSC was created to foster unity among Nigeria’sabout 250 ethnic groups and to create a sense of nationhood and selflessservice among young people. There use to be two NYSC batches, namely batch A and batch B. However, with so many graduates waiting for NYSCcall up, NYSC now have three batches, batch A, batch B, and batch C.The NYSC programmes runs for about 12 months and during that period,graduates of Universities and Polytechnic are deployed to serve in states thatare not their state of origin.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

          The NYSC, having so many programs as part of their activities during the service year of Corp member do not keep track of all there programs secure and accessible for future use, like the CDS or PET project record of the coppers, due to that no proper record can be given for the account of the NYSC PET project done by the members of the Corp. This method of record data processing reveals a number of problemswhich includes:

• Records to be kept in are often too large, diversified and complex to be processed manually.

• Most often some names are omitted as a result of manual processing

• Statistics of yearly NYSC members are hardly correct as a result of manual calculations

• Project done by coppers are easily forgotten

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The objective of this project is to:

1) Design and implement a central database system that would serveas NYSC database, which will contain information of all the graduates, all they did during their service year (projects).

2) Capable of generating a corresponding list of students and their pet project to their community whenever needed.

1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The research work will cover among other things:

1.  NYSC Documentation

2. Statistical report of NYSC PET project

3. Analysis on population of the students for NYSC posting.

1.5 LIMITATIONS

During the design of this work, much finance was required and owing to the financial meltdown globally, the research was limited by finance and henceconcentrated on the available materials within the locality.

This research work is also limited to the documentation purpose.

1.6 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

This study will in many ways promote good management in NYSC orientation agency. The managerial approach to NYSC registration will be automated making information processing and decision making easy. Also,this study will help the institutions to achieve the following:

1.Have a database of all the NYSC coppers both present and the past

2. Have the activities of the present and the past NYSC coppers project and community works done by them in person or in group

3.Maintain a high level secured database