NYSC: Why we must celebrate Gowon’s vision
By Etumakwa Akoni
The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has continued to remain a
unifying force, binding Nigerians of various shades of religion,
culture, ethnicity and ideological creeds despite the existential
threats by some unpatriotic Nigerians.
The scheme has come to stay because the youth, for which it was
established, love the clarion call to service of fatherland.
NYSC is one of the best programmes that happen to Nigerians of all
regional, cultural and religious backgrounds. For this, Nigerians owe
General Yakubu Gowon immeasurable thankfulness. His vision after the
civil war led to the establishment of the scheme in 1973, which has
become relevant like the sun, in Nigeria in all levels of development.
The scheme mobilises young Nigerian graduates of tertiary institutions
of learning from different cultural and religious backgrounds in order
to give them national orientation for three weeks before they go into
the world of adulthood and responsibility.
In the camp, corps members mingle together and identify with cultures
other than their own. After the orientation course, corps members
usually relish the experiences they have had in the camp with
nostalgia.
In the camp, future lives of young Nigerians are shaped. No wonder
political alignments, cultural assimilations and intercultural
marriages are the results. Thus, misconceptions, prejudices and
superstitions held against other regions naturally die off in the camp
and at places of primary assignment.
In orientation camps and places of primary assignment, the youths
acquire leadership qualities that help them to relate freely and
peacefully with host communities and the larger societies later in
life.
Apart from leadership training, the scheme, through its Skills
Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED), gives life-long
training to the youths to become self-reliant after the service year,
instead of looking for jobs that are not easily available. The
testimonies of individuals who availed themselves of the opportunities
provided by SAED programme come every week on NYSC Half Hour on NTA.
The hitherto jobseekers, now equipped with relevant skills, became job
providers.
My hope is that the corps members’ trust fund which the
Director-General of NYSC, Brig-General Shuaibu Ibrahim is pursuing is
approved by the federal government so that youths will be sure of
loans to float their businesses after service. Through this, after
five to ten years, Nigeria’s Gross National Product (GNP) will
experience a remarkable increase.
This will also mop up excess jobless youths in the labour market by
reducing unemployment rate. Gainful employment of this reserved army
will invariable reduce youth restiveness and criminal tendencies in
the society.
In June of this year, the respected coordinator of Human Rights
Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) Emmanuel Onwubiko, appealed to
President Muhammadu Buhari no to listen to those calling for the
scrapping of the NYSC, but to reposition it better for the realisation
of its mandates.
Onwubiko said that rather than scrapping the scheme, it should be
repositioned, in order to sustain many of its noble values. He said
the scheme had provided the opportunity for Nigerian youths to acquire
the spirit of self-reliance by developing skills for self-employment;
contribute to accelerated growth of national economy and develop
common ties to promote national unity and integration.
One interesting thing is that opinion polls conducted by HURIWA shows
that Nigerians want the scheme preserved, because it has been a source
of inspiration for young persons to attain higher education.
Onwubiko, angry with the detractors of NYSC, said, “One of such
distractions is the proposed law for the scrapping of NYSC scheme,
which has been copied by many other countries. One wonders what
example Nigeria would be showing such countries by scrapping the
scheme it sold the idea to them?”
After the well-conducted opinion poll by HURIWA, the unanimous
response by Nigerians was that President Buhari should preserve the
legacies NYSC represents.
Fortunately for Nigerian youths, Buhari responded, “I feel strongly
about NYSC,” when he hosted corps members in Daura as part of their
Sallah visit, thus halting the malevolent intention of the scheme’s
detractors.
In September the management of NYSC said efforts were in top gear to
establish corps members’ trust fund, to provide start-up capital for
graduates after their service years.
Brig-General Ibrahim said this in Abuja, during his nationwide virtual
address to the 2021, Batch ‘B’, Stream II set of corps members.
The DG in one of his speeches to corps members said NYSC was working
relentlessly to get approval for the establishment of the NYSC Youth
Trust Fund which will pull millions of Nigerians out of poverty. The
DG said that the fund, if eventually established, will help actualise
President Buhari’s vision of lifting 100 million Nigerians out of
unemployment before the next decade. He also disclosed that the scheme
had trained over 500,000 corps members in different agro-allied, skill
development and vocational programmes.
What more do citizens want other than peaceful coexistence, sound
health and financial prosperity? I, like all young Nigerians, are
indebted to General Gowon’s vision. We want NYSC despite attacks from
people who are afraid of Brig-General Ibrahim’s reforms.
In the Sunday Trust of October 3, 2021, was a feature with
terror-inducing headline, “Unsafe and uncertain: Inside Nigeria’s
mandatory youth corps”, originally done
by Al-Jazeera. The report however, has so many spurious claims,
outright misinformation and erroneous facts; deliberately put together
to discredit the scheme, which for years, remains the darling of
Nigerian youths.
The issue of insecurity conspicuously highlighted by the Al-Jazeera
reporter showed that he was struggling between falsehood and truth. It
was heartwarming that the report note, “While there have been cases of
corps members being killed or kidnapped, there is no data to suggest
they were targeted because they were part of the NYSC.”
As a move towards guaranteeing corps members’ safety, the NYSC
management has partnered with relevant security agencies. It has also
unveiled measures and issued stern directives that will prevent corps
members from becoming objects of violent attacks by daredevil
criminals or auto crashes.
The NYSC management, being responsive to public outcry, has in the
past promptly withdrawn corps members wherever their safety was
threatened, in addition to embarking on continuous sensitisation of
corps members on security matters.
Again, here goes another quote in the report, “Although some graduates
find ways to skip the programme, many working-class Nigerians – whose
job prospects are already limited – cannot sacrifice the potential
opportunities that come with an NYSC certification.” If NYSC is
solving unemployment threats, why do people want it discontinued?
Isn’t their motive driven by mischief?
The feature also painted a graphic picture of the plight of one
Kelechi, 27, who was posted and first served in Taraba state in 2019.
Part of it reads: “When he first applied, he was posted to Taraba
state in northeastern Nigeria, along the middle belt region between
the north and the south – an area plagued by inter-ethnic conflicts
and banditry…”
Patriotic Nigerians wonder whether graduates apply for national
(NYSC) service or are mobilised for service by the authorities of
their respective universities and polytechnics and colleges? Or was
the said Kelechi’s case different. Why should he have to apply when
NYSC does not seek applications from fresh graduates before mobilising
them for the one-year mandatory service?
The deplorable state of NYSC orientation camps in some states is now
history in a spate of two years under the visionary, dedicated,
purposeful and transformational leadership of Brig-General Shuaibu
Ibrahim at the helm of affairs.
So far, efforts have been intensified by many state governments and
the federal government, to complete landmark rehabilitation works at
some of the camps. Engagement with critical stakeholders is one
important strategy adopted by General Ibrahim to attract goodwill for
the NYSC.
An audience he once had with the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF)
facilitated the rehabilitation of old permanent orientation camps and
the completion of new ones across Nigeria.
The irrefutable fact is that the streams of achievements recorded by
the Nasarawa state-born senior military officer and a professor of
History, together with the novel policies introduced by him are too
innumerable for any writer to chronicle in a single article.
It was funny to learn in the Al Jazeera story from one corps member
that she did not learn anything while participating in the Skills
Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) programme at the
orientation camp, where she and others were trained on photography.
But the fact that Margaret, the female corps member in question, could
not have learnt anything does not mean others did not.
It also does not puncture the reality that many corps members who were
once trained in various vocational skills courtesy of the SAED
programme, graduated to become self-employed, while several of them,
also assisted with funds by the NYSC management, are now doing
amazingly great as young entrepreneurs who have also offered jobs to
many unemployed youths.
The fact that corps members are deployed to public schools as teachers
was necessitated by the need to bridge the shortfall of teachers in
public schools across the federation.
The fact that several calls had been made in some quarters, demanding
the scrapping of the NYSC Act, makes the Al-Jazeera report a hatchet
job.
Etumakwa Akon writes from Abuja