Over the years it has been an outstretched monotone from government and other proponents that the National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) was founded to foster citizenry reintegration and national unity after the civil war. Former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, who enacted the decree establishing the scheme on May 22, 1973 repeated this mission statement at his 84th birthday on October 19 last year.
We have heard it times without number, and what is left to be seen are the fortunes of the scheme when placed side-by-side its negatives forty six years after.
First, there were so many half-truths about NYSC scheme. Though history has it that there’s no military conscription in Nigeria, but operating a scheme established by a military decree and enforcing it on young graduates that unless they undergo it, they can’t secure employment in government establishments, is to me a ‘para’ military conscription, because those who through genuine cause obtain exemption letters, will have their entry point into the civil service shortened by one step.
The scheme, in more ways than not, cuts the image of waste of human resource. What else explains the ugly phenomenon where the teeming of unemployed youths that roam the street are former corps members. They have observed the so-called ‘service’ to fatherland, and their reward is negligence from the government that coerced them to that mission. So, in the area of securing employment, the scheme has failed.
Some argue that it is a unionizing scheme that has kept merging people of different cultures. But the idea of thinking that its only NYSC scheme that cements people of varied ethno-religious affiliations in fraternal love is warped.
The records are everywhere, tertiary institutions bond people of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds more than anything else in Nigeria. And next to it is civil service including the armed forces, followed in that pecking order by professional or vocational occupation such as medicine, priesthood, law, etc; before NYSC scheme comes to play. So those, including Elder Gowon selling that argument should acknowledge that it’s dead on arrival.
Take a cursory Google-look at the area of fostering cohesion among Nigerian citizenry separated by the agonizing memories of that thirty-month civil war and you would be shocked how poor NYSC has fared. The gap created by the tragedy of those unfortunate belligerent years keeps widening by the day, due the hypocrisy of our political leaders who instituted the NYSC package. Starting from Gen. Gowon himself up to the present occupant of the country’s number one seat, the story has remained the same. If it’s not hypocrisy, which other term best suits the narration where the man who formulated the decree refused to grant the Igbo warlord, Col. Ojukwu, state pardon to return to Nigeria.
And when Gen. Murtala Mohammed overthrew his government, Murtala allowed the scheme to keep running to help in ‘reconciling’ the aggrieved victims and victors of the war. Yet he saw nothing wrong in refusing Chief Ojukwu a return ticket. It was after 13 years in exile, that Federal Government of Nigeria under President ShehuShagari granted an official pardon to Odumegwu-Ojukwu and opened the road for a triumphant return in 1982. How can the ‘reconciliation’ crusade enshrined in the NYSC codes assimilate into our youths if the political leaders are insincere with it?
When entrusted with the task of managing the finance ministry of the post war Nigeria, Chief Awolowo and his team of functionaries had to share the collective responsibility of having demonstrated the height of hatred against the Igbo survivors with their twenty pound policy.
Yet, they expect NYSC to remain faithful to its mandate of reuniting the populace afflicted by errors of civil war.
Even at the return to democracy, the November 20, 1999 Odi massacre in Bayelsa and the October 22, 2001 Zaki-Biam homicide of Benue by the Nigeria Army speak volumes about a people who claim to be pursuing national reconciliation.
Flashback to 2011 post-election violence that claimed the lives of about eight corps members nationwide orchestrated by angry youths (ostensibly sponsored by aggrieved losers of that election) and you would understand with those who are calling for the abolition of the program.
Further, let’s consider the stipend the government pays these young
graduates. They receive paltry sum of twenty thousand naira (excluding bank commission). Consider our economy and survival indices and you would agree that their stipend is nothing short of a slave wage. It only belittles Nigeria as a country where youths are so cheap to hire with meager fee. How does one expect multinational companies like Julius Berger to remunerate our graduates lucratively when they hire them, if one’s own country has already demeaned them?
Our leaders place little or no values on our young graduates. The orientation camps across the country are all eyesore. Poor living conditions, inadequate amenities and uninhabitable halls of residence are the features of where our tertiary institution graduates tagged ‘future leaders’ are subjected to.
On November 29, 2016, Miss Ifedolapo Oladepo was declared dead in the NYSC Camp in Kano state due to poor health facility. She was a first class graduate of transport management from Ladoke Akintola University of Technology.
Similarly, on December 1 the same year another first class graduate of petroleum engineering from the University of Uyo, Mr. Ukeme Monday, died in Zamfara state orientation camp. In addition to his first class certificate, it was learnt that Monday had also won four scholarships and other top academic prizes as a student.
That is to say two ‘first class’ corps members died at NYSC camps 48 hours apart due to lack to proper medical facilities that could take care of their basic diagnosis and treatment.
How can such concentration camps impact sense of forgiveness and reconciliation on the mind of the youths who are meant to preach the gospel of national unity to the wider society by their own examples.
On the contrary, exposure to such unfriendly environment engenders ferocious anger and hostility. But surprisingly, Nigerians are Spartan survivors. The corps members would just exhibit Fela’s satire of “suffering and smiling”, and life goes on.
Jude writes via [email protected], 08099062006
