Another Female Youth Corps Member Dies in Bayelsa

Emmanuel Addeh in Yenagoa

About three months after Miss Chiyerum Elechi, a newly deployed female member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) died at the orientation camp in Kaiama, Kolokuma-Opokoma, Bayelsa State, another young woman, identified simply as Jumoke, has also lost her life at the same camp.

But unlike Elechi, 27, who died after bleeding profusely from some openings in her body, it was gathered that Jumoke, a 2016 Batch B Stream II Corps member, died of an asthma attack on Friday. The deceased, who undergoing the compulsory orientation, a core programme of the scheme, was said to have breathed her last at the Clinic Department of the camp after efforts by health workers to save her life failed.

However, it was learnt that the deceased corps member may have developed the condition before resuming for the compulsory national service as she was said to have earlier reported in camp with an inhaler.

It could not be immediately ascertained whether the device meant to ward off any sudden asthma crisis, had been exhausted before the latest attack that ended her life. A source who was close to the victim, who pleaded anonymity, however said the victim suffered her first attack a week after she arrived the camp, but was assisted by her colleagues at the time.

The source said, “My friend told me that when the deceased suffered her first attack in camp, she helped her to overcome it. But we don’t know what happened when a similar attack that took her life happened”. The deceased’s remains were said to have been deposited at the Federal Medical Centre, Yenagoa, capital of Bayelsa State.

Already, the Director-General, NYSC, Brig.-Gen. Sule Kauzure, it was gathered, has dispatched a delegation of senior NYSC officials from the headquarters in Abuja to Kaiama.
The officials, it was gathered, arrived on Friday evening and immediately commenced investigations to ascertain the circumstances that led to the death of the corps member. No official of the state NYSC was willing to speak on the matter as they claimed that the national headquarters of the organisation had
already taken over the case.

A team from the House of Representatives in Abuja, also recently visited the state to ascertain the cause of the incessant death of corps members in camps around the country in recent times.