When the Federal Military Government under the leadership of Gen Yakubu Gowon (rtd) set up the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) post-civil war in 1973, many Nigerians praised the scheme.
The mandatory post-tertiary scheme was part of efforts to reconstruct, reconcile and rebuild the country after the Nigerian Civil War.
Today, especially 52 years later, the programme has come under serious scrutiny.
From the lens of corps members
As an example, a prospective corps member by the name Michael has just been mobilised in the 2025 Batch A (Stream 1) to participate in the National Youth Service Corps scheme (NYSC) after graduating in late 2024.
For him, the prospect of serving as a corps member is fascinating and apprehensive at the same time.
He said, “I have been posted to a state in the North-central region and I look forward to resuming at the orientation camp.
“However, I do not know what to expect with current security challenges everywhere in the country; I hope that my posting would be in the city centre, not a remote village,” he said.
Iyabo, on the other hand, did her own mandatory youth corps service a few years ago and she was posted from Lagos to a state in the South-south region of the country.
She said, “NYSC was like I wasted one year of my life because I was already an entrepreneur since my undergraduate years.
“Leaving my budding business for one year to go and serve and return to unemployment did not work for me. If graduates were offered the option of not serving but being awarded their certificates after camp, people like me would have taken that option,” she said.
As it is therefore, Michael and Iyabo are on the parallel sides of a growing call for the NYSC programme to be reviewed.
A parent’s view
A parent, Mr Kazeem Salami, noted that the NYSC scheme had outlived its purpose since 2011.
He said, “The post-election violence in some states that led to the death of about a dozen members of the NYSC brought to the fore the need to review the scheme.
“I had to think hard and long about it when my son was mobilised the following year. Eventually, I decided that his participation would depend on where he was posted to,” he said.
Review in line with current realities
General insecurity and the safety of corps members are not the only reasons some stakeholders are calling for a review or outright scrapping of the NYSC scheme.
Some are of the views that the seven-point objectives of the scheme, as enunciated in Decree No 51 reviewed as of June 16, 1993 have not been achieved.
The seven-point objectives are to promote national unity and integration, inculcate discipline and patriotism, develop self-reliance, contribute to national development, remove prejudices and ignorance, ensure equitable distribution and proper utilisation of skills and development of a sense of corporate existence.
The NYSC was principally established to foster unity among the various ethnic nationalities that make up Nigeria because participants serve in states and regions other than theirs. This is meant to foster understanding, growth and tolerance of different cultures across the nation, most especially to educate them on the customs and traditional practices in communities where they serve.
“Can we genuinely say that we have been able to achieve the objectives? When governors begin to evacuate their indigenes from other states, has it not cast a doubt in the minds of Nigerians on the continued validity of the scheme?” an analyst asked.
However, other stakeholders believe that scrapping the scheme would amount to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
According to them, as a model for national integration and a platform for value orientation, the NYSC scheme should be reorganised to meet the challenges of the 21st century rather than being scrapped.
They therefore called for a new scheme that should be properly funded and divided into sub-corps where the energies and intellect of young Nigerians are used to provide for the critical sectors of the economy.
Miss Sarah Adejobi, a youth empowerment advocate, says one way to make the NYSC scheme viable is by redefining its focus from post-war national integration to entrepreneurship for national development.
“Corps members are some of the greatest pool of human resources available in the most remote parts of the country; if we do a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis, that is a big strength.
“Therefore, I have been advocating a system whereby they are divided into engineering corps, agricultural corps, medical corps and educational corps.’’
She said the engineering corps would be designed to help in road construction, maintenance and other engineering works in rural areas.
Adejobi added that the agricultural corps would be designed in line with national food security strategies with corps members teaching modern farming techniques to rural farmers.
“The medical corps should comprise doctor-corps members and other medical practitioners motivated to provide medical care to rural dwellers.
“Likewise, the education corps will provide qualified, willing and motivated teachers in the rural areas.
“This is the best way to utilise the corps members and maintain continuity, while providing them with job opportunities,” she said.
She said that if administered in the spirit that reflected the changing world, the NYSC scheme would bring out the best in the youths and instill in them the virtues of hard work, diligence, enterprise, patriotism and independence.
Interestingly, the debate about modeling the NYSC has been around for some time.
Ex-minister’s view
In 2012, the then minister of youth development, Mr Bolaji Abdullahi said a new agenda was being adopted for the scheme.
The former minister talked about corps members not being given preferential postings to the oil and gas sector or lucrative establishments in so-called big states where their services were underutilised.
He also said that corps members would be drafted to the rural areas for cultural diversity and internalising the challenges of cooperation and national integration to bolster the credibility and relevance of the programme.
Critics, who argue that the reforms were not far-reaching, say affluent and influential persons in the polity and the economy had bastardised the scheme by influencing the posting of their children and wards.
They also mentioned insecurity, financial unsustainability and poor living conditions as some of the factors militating against the implementation of meaningful reforms.
Stakeholders, including a member of the House of Representatives, Hon Philip Agbese are therefore making a strong case for a holistic review of the NYSC scheme and its leadership.
The suggestion that NYSC should be made optional–allowing individuals to choose whether to participate in the programme or not– is a strong element of that call.
In any case, the NYSC scheme has fulfilled its core mandate since creation; therefore any call to review it is not abnormal because similar agencies established alongside the scheme have undergone consistent review in line with realities on ground. Scrapping it however should not be an option because of its attendant consequences.