By Uguru Uchechukwu Okannagba
National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is the brainchild of General Yakubu Gowon (Rtd) after the Nigerian Civil War that ended in 1970. The NYSC Scheme began in 1973 by Decree No. 24 of 22nd May, 1973, although the National Youth Service Corps Act that established the Scheme commenced or became operational on the 16th day of June, 1993.
It is indubitable and crystal clear that the major aim of the Scheme is to promote national unity and peaceful integration after the defunct Biafran War, having admitted to remain one indivisible and indissoluble entity.
For the avoidance of doubt of the above assertion, it is material to take a voyage to the Act that established the NYSC. Section 1 (2) of the NYSC Act provides:
The service corps shall with a view to the proper encouragement and development of common ties among the Nigerian youths;
The service corps shall with a view to the promotion of National unity; and
The development of Nigerian youth and Nigeria into a great and dynamic economy.
Subsection 3 paragraphs (g) and (h) of the above section further provides:
(g) The objectives of the service corps shall be to remove prejudices, eliminate ignorance and confirm at first hand the many similarities among Nigerians of all ethnic groups; and
(h) Develop a sense of corporate existence and common destiny of the people of Nigeria.
The painstaking swot of the Act mentioned supra is to ensure that the opinion contained in this article is not made without basis or foundation. Thus, having laid an indisputable foundation, the question now is: Has any of the above mentioned objectives been achieved or accomplished since the establishment of the NYSC in 1973 till date or we are just deceiving ourselves in the name of NYSC?
The above question shall be answered in the negative and affirmative respectively. This is because, a comprehensive reading of the Act that established the Scheme will leave us without any iota of doubt that the Scheme is built purely on good motive which later culminated to deceit and its aims and objectives have been defeated long time ago. I am not oblivious of the fact that those who depend on the NYSC Scheme for their feeding or as a means of livelihood will not hesitate to disagree with this axiomatic truth, but the good thing is that, truth is built on a convincing facts which support what one says.
If I had all the time and space I would have taken the all the objectives of the Scheme seriatim and analyse them critically, but let me take the pain and deal with a few of them and leave the rest for some other time.
Promoting National Unity and Integration:
Beginning from 1973 till date, the NYSC Scheme has done little or nothing in terms of promoting our unity as a country devoid of the fact that the country keeps on deluding or beguiling its citizens that the NYSC has achieved a lot in promoting national unity and integration. It is unarguable that Nigeria as a country is heterogeneous and the names we bear as individuals automatically depict where one comes from insofar as he is a Nigerian.
Apart from that, greater percentage of the Corps members prefers to serve within their geographical zones.
Peradventure, if he or she is not posted to the area of his or her interest, the next option available is to re-deploy to that same area of interest by giving sympathetic and unsubstantiated reasons. This is prevalent and common to the people of South-west, who prefer to serve in their locality without considering the essence of the Scheme, while those that undertake the pain to serve with dedication irrespective of where he or she was posted are being humiliated, defrauded, discriminated against and ill-treated by their host communities as if they are foreigners in their own country or fatherland simply because they are on a compulsory national assignment. Experience, they say, is the best teacher. If not because I am writing this article as an ex-Corps member, I wouldn’t have believed it myself. As a Corps member, I had nasty and unpleasant experiences of which space will not permit me to recount here.
Shall we believe that it has promoted national unity while many Corps members don’t always go back to their various places alive not because of natural occurrence but rather decimated by their host communities, taking undue advantage of them being ignorant of their environment or place in which they found themselves. If the country should honestly take the statistics of Corps members who have been unlawfully murdered or lynched, one will certainly sympathize with the innocent youths on what they pass through in strange lands all in the name of NYSC. The public can only become aware of it when it is covered by the press like that of River State re-run election which was widely publicized. What about the ritual killings, duping and raping of Corps members in the remotest villages where they are posted to serve?
How then do we blame the Nigerian youths for not being creative and skillful while the opportunity to be so has been deliberately denied them as a result of poor governance, poor policies, corruption and ethnic bigotry which have eaten deep into the fabric of our country, Nigeria.
NYSC as a Scheme came up with the idea of Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneur Development (SAED) to make the Nigerian youths acquire various skills while in camp, but I finally discovered that it is a calculated strategy to exploit Corps members the little token they receive as monthly allowance (popularly called “allowee”) from the federal government, knowing full well that the money is too meager to even take care of a Corps member.
Uguru Uchechukwu Okannagba is an Ebonyi State based Legal Practitioner.
