The National Youths Service Corps scheme, has outlived its usefulness. It has since become a cesspool of corruption, an ugly blight on the nation’s fledging image. Let me quickly state that being a past participant in the scheme, I cannot be labelled a busy-body if I continue to raise alarms about the heinous criminality that has come to characterise theoperations of the erstwhile nobleagency. I am therefore a “stakeholder”.
Secondly, because the programme was partially designed to toughen participants, it appears as if officials of the body have taken license of that objective to unduly subject young men and women who dutifully show up for service to inhuman and degrading treatments – a ruthless exploitation in the silly calculation that being “birds of passage” they are not in a position to formally complain about their plightsbefore they disperse.
As human beings and, in particular, as Nigerians, these fresh graduates deserve some respect and fairness. Clearly they are not getting any. There is corruption everywhere in Nigeria but the case of the NYSC is undoubtedly phenomenal. What is happening within the NYSC is horrible and it is high time that President Goodluck Jonathan looked into it and save the scheme from imminent kaput. Mr. President, himself a corps veteran, has the moral obligation, well beyond the call of duty, to take a special personal look at the decadence that has enveloped that office and do something about it.
Established in 1973, it was intended to actualise certain fundamental objectives which were said to include the desire to reconstruct, reconcile and rebuild the country after the unfortunate civil war “with a view to the proper encouragement and development of common ties among the youths of Nigeria and the promotion of national unity.”
It was principally intended to inculcate discipline in our youths by instilling in them a culture of industry at work, patriotic and loyal service to the nation. It certainly was not intended to expose them to the harsh realities of corruption, man’s inhumanity to man, and administrative incompetence which now confront them throughout their service period. They discharge from the service with justifiable bitterness and awful disdain for the system, the very opposite of the original objective.
The massive corruption and maladministration that is taking place therein did not start today. NYSC has somehow come to assume the ugly face of corruption for this country. The shame of it all is that, rather than abate, the institutional misfeasance is escalating by the day leading to the rising vulnerability of corps members to serious abuses. Ostensibly because it is typically a “one-way-traffic,” with each batch expected to bear its own brunt and go away without any organised responses, officials of the service have seized that as liberty to recklessly exploit those who mandatorily sign up for their service, year in, year out.
On observing the extremely inferior kits and uniforms that the service has been issuing to participants over the years with apparent intention to “kill their spirits” and humiliate them, I once had cause to do a piece entitled “Do we still need the NYSC?” to which there has been no direct answer but all indications are that we no longer need it. It has become a conduit pipe for unmitigated stealing. It is most likely a win to wager that the amount of money that it expends on each corps member annually is far less than 25 per cent of what is budgeted for them.
It is common knowledge that NYSC contractors are routinely made to cough out about 50 per cent of the contract moneys back to greedy officials which then make it impossible for them to perform to specifications. And because they have been so heavily compromised in the process, the officials are themselves unable to perform any quality control checks on the goods thus supplied or services rendered by contractors.
That explains the eyesore that we usually behold in corps members parading the streets in wretched uniforms made from the most inferior of materials like escaping war prisoners. Mr. President, for example, would recall that the uniform that he was issued during his days as a corps member are quite different from the “Obioma” patch-patch outfits we see today.
What does it cost to make these young Nigerians dress responsibly and respectably? The other day I asked two “corpers” who asked me for a ride why they were wearing unbranded T-shirts of very low quality. They answered that they were indeed lucky to get what they were putting on because some of their colleagues who came late got nothing!
It has come to a point where we really have to ask ourselves if the NYSC is still required in our national life. Recent developments around that office which have to do with the extortion of money from prospective corps members in the name of “online registration” is one that must be looked at as seriously as it deserves. Where is our conscience, as a people, if we could also extort money from young men and women steppingforward to serve their country?
Why on earth would the service demand that fresh graduates who have never earned a penny in their lives should cough out as much as N4000 just to register online and to receive SMS confirmationof their registration? Are NYSC officials saying that the government can no longer fund the scheme? If so, why not disband it?
When I first read the story about registration fees I thought someone was joking until I actually visited the official website of the NYSC where I found the scandalous notice sitting obscenely on its front page. Part of the nonsense reads: “All prospective corps members are to register online. Those who wish to get their Call-up numbers by SMS/email and subsequently print their Call-up letters online are to pay the sum of Four Thousand Naira (?4,000.00) using any Bank’s Automated Teller Machine (ATM) Cards or the PIN Vending option from any bank in Nigeria”.
This, to say the least, is brazen internet robbery camouflaged in officialdom! Simply because it has now become the vogue for unscrupulously corrupt government agencies to rip-off job-seeking helpless Nigerians of monies they do not yet have by asking them to pay incredulous “application fees” for non-existent jobs, the old corruption fox, the NYSC, has also joined in the indecorous looting bandwagon. That is nothing but perfidy upon perfidy.
A shameless official of the service was actually quoted as saying that the charges were made “in the interest” of the would-be corps members. Whenever I assess a corps member these days in the street, the total outfit on him or her is worth less than N4000 in a fair and uncorrupt market. So who then wants a bonanza out of hapless corps member and why through a process which almost every Dick and Harry knows is plainly fraudulent these days?
Where else, except in a corruption-ridden society like ours would such a stupidly dismissiveofficial response be offered over such a monumental scandal? The NYSC is in need of urgent and drastic reforms.Itis overdue for a comprehensive overhaul starting with the out-datedmilitary-influencedenabling law which mandates that it is only soldiers that can head it. I think it is a policy mistake that should not be allowed to stand. Aju-aya!
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