SOME months before the beginning of my national youth service program, there was a trend in which many Nigerians called for the scrapping of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), convinced that the scheme had outlived its usefulness. Some other Nigerians believed that the NYSC should be retained. I belong to the second group, but I see the points made by the first group. NYSC, like any scheme, is not flawless; there is room for improvement, per my personal and just concluded experience in the scheme.
Nigeria, by the events of recent years, has become more divided—along ethnic and religious lines, often inspired by the political ambitions of the usual suspects. The side that calls for an end to NYSC does so with a reckoning of the country's political and existential issues. The divisions in the country and some other issues are long-standing and are reasons that informed the creation of the NYSC, with defined objectives to attain.
The point is not that NYSC is useless; it is that the intentions for the scheme appear to have paled strongly when assessed for effectiveness in achieving its set goals.
When the National Youth Service Corps program was started in 1973, it was targeted at promoting national unity and integration, character development and discipline, economic and strategic growth. Of the three, there is none that Nigerians could comfortably say has materialized without an iota of doubt, 53 years after. To name but two, ethnic mistrust still persists, and there are hardly any economic indices to substantiate how the NYSC has helped Nigeria grow economically.
Over about 20 years, military regimes led by Generals Murtala Muhammed (1975 to 1976), Olusẹgun Ọbasanjọ (1976 to 1979), Major General Muhammadu Buhari (1983 to 1985), and General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (1985 to 1993) hindered Nigeria's economic and strategic growth, national unity, and integration. This has left damage that the NYSC hasn't yet fixed.
While the current ethnopolitical fissures in the country are enough and more directly causative to the calls for the scrapping of the NYSC, the historical fault lines could be said to have inspired some of the persistent issues in the country. A pointer to this is in how corps members now dread serving in some parts of the country for fear of loss of their lives or, if a little less unfortunate, being kidnapped. This is similar to the tensions that enveloped the country in the 60s when coups bore strong ethnic and religious colorations, and citizens were extremely restive about living in certain parts.
In recent times, corps members have been kidnapped; some have lost their lives, not only because of insecurity but also because of political upheavals. The point is not that NYSC is useless, it is that the intentions for the scheme appear to have paled strongly when assessed for effectiveness in achieving its set goals. When I was posted to Bayelsa State, my first concern was the history of the region in vandalism and some other anomalies. I was concerned for my safety—my concerns were validated by the presence of heavily armed security men at the many checkpoints mounted on the road.
What is more worrisome, and quite ironic, is that PCMs are officially asked to not travel in a manner that they could be identified as such. They are advised to not travel by certain hours, which is a fair advisory. But the staggering thing about this is how disconcerting it is that a group of young people has the job of being a ray of hope, the human symbol that a country could heal, that a country could welcome its own in any of its parts, yet such fears have to hang over their heads.
NYSC fulfills some purposes that perhaps serve as a positive marker on the objective of character development and discipline.
I could not help but think about two poems I had studied at the university at various times in my service year. I had my mind roving over WH Auden's "The Unknown Citizen" and Claude McKay's "If We Must Die". In Auden's poem, the character is a perfect model for a citizen, except that his life is monotonous and devoid of any personal pursuit of ambitions. I asked myself if what the country expected of me was to be that character—to not have my own mind, to stay in the mood as I was when I was living a regimented life while at the orientation camp, where my life was nearly completely written for me. At some other times, within what the framework of the scheme allowed, I wondered if I could have such a stubborn personal call as the voice in McKay's poem. Mostly, I felt torn between being that figure in Auden's poem and being the spirit in McKay's—it was an unresolved conflict between corporate politics and the learned habit of an ex-Students' Union comrade.
I nurtured fears, I battled uncertainties. But my story was not unique. Many corps members were like me. Many are serving out of fear, not out of the patriotism expected of a nation's builders. The most popular kind of fear among corps members is the one that comes about from such punitive measures in a person's career or life, just because they ditched the NYSC. The examples made of some political heavyweights in the country and the compulsion of a Certificate of National Service in job recruitments have done the effective job of deterring many graduates from absconding. If made optional, many corps members will jettison the service year, although I doubt that those who would stay would be fewer.
NYSC fulfills some purposes that perhaps serve as a positive marker on the objective of character development and discipline. The Community Development Service (CDS) meetings and projects, the work routine in various Places of Primary Assignment (PPA), Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Department (SAED) classes and other career buffers with partner organisations, when done thoroughly, imbue corps members with the abilities to collaborate, be creative, and work with professionals and in professional spaces. They give corps members hands-on experience in more economically consequential roles. A corps member distinguished in these may have their early career life sorted already.
In the sense that corps members are prepared for what white-collar jobs or personal businesses may portend, NYSC remains a validly important project—Seyi Vodi is a popular example. My experience at my PPA is one that I will continue to value: it has given me a front-row feel of what engaging topical national issues and social constructs mean. When, as a Literature major, I studied literary texts at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, it was almost always from a sociopolitical standpoint. It was easy and, in a way, distant to go through a short story (say, RK Narayan's "A Horse and Two Goats") and assess why a character is morally low, or unfortunate. But sitting in the live studio and producing radio shows where issues that tampered with people's health, mental and economic well-being were dissected gave me a vantage point to reinforce the commitment that literature is not arts for arts sake. Stories, essentially, are not pedestrian, and very possibly, certain realities are wilder than fiction.
You are a thread in the fabric of national development; if you loosen up, you may weaken the efforts of thousands of others.
Even for corps members whose fields are in the life sciences or conditioned to quantitative research, there is a particular disillusionment, a kind of divorce from the fiction of life that studentship might have shielded one against, that besets them. One time you are excused from so many things because you are a student, you are given discounts, and you are less cornered by family and relatives, another time, you are enrolled in a tight schedule between 4/5am and 10pm. Social media sees you less, steeze drops, you are surrounded by fresh graduates who are just as strange to you as you are to them, and within 21 days you are prepared for a life in service. You try to find love, you try to find a paying PPA, you are worried about housing, about transportation, about feeding and about your welfare. There are non-academic projects. You are expected to take responsibilities. You cannot shirk duties, cannot complain. You are a thread in the fabric of national development; if you loosen up, you may weaken the efforts of thousands of others.
The metaphor of being a thread in the fabric of national development occurred to me as my time drew to an end in the service year. I recalled stories of corps members who were taking up CSR projects, PPAs where, when corps members are unavailable, their workforce is debilitated, stories of thousands of corps members serving as ad-hoc staff members, helping out INEC (as I have myself). It occurred to me then that while the actualisation of set objectives may remain contested, while the opinions may exist that NYSC no longer matters, there is a conviction about the benefits of the scheme, and the argument for its discontinuance, to me, is only an instance of decapitating the head to cure a person's headache. It removes a workforce whose economic inputs can only be enormous when accurately put in perspectives, thereby upsetting an economy already in its nether days, to say the least.
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