The Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps, Brig-General Johnson Olawumi, has assured the House of Representatives that the controversial N4,000 call-up-letters fee would remain optional.
According to him, the fee was strictly for the printing of the letters and not for accessing the NYSC online portal.
Speaking at the hearing of a petition on the matter by the House Committee on Public Petitions on Wednesday, the DG claimed that the agency opted for the option of printing call-up-letters from its online portal following the increasing cases of fake call-up letters flooding the society.
Olawumi told the committee that the policy was a product of Private Public Partnership, which started in 2013 after Sigma, the partner, emerged as the preferred bidder from a list of 49 firms.
The DG explained, “Corps members are supposed to pay more than N4, 000 and we want the process to be optional.
“It is an optional thing and the process will remain optional as far as the agreement subsists with Sigma.
“Even if the price crashes to N100, it will continue to remain optional”.
Olawumi notd that at the close of the portal, 124, 831 corps members had registered online.
However, only 23, 211 paid for the printing of their letters online.
Meanwhile, a group, Say No Campaign, which was in the forefront of protests against the levy, insisted that there was no justification for it.
