One of the areas where the scheme had faced scathing criticism recently is the mobilisation process which starts from the corps- producing institutions with the compilation and processing of student’s data and culminates in the production and issuance of the call- up letter by the NYSC. The service corps had been made to understand rightly, that many corps members had died in the process of the shuttling between their homes and their institutions trying to get their call- up numbers and later the call – up letters. Very often the critics referred to the successes recorded by among others, the West African Examination Council (WACE) and Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) in their operations to ease registration and accessing results by their candidate in the comfort of their homes and asked the NYSC to take a cue. It is therefore, uncharitable all in the name of criticising to refer to the decision as planned imposition of online registration fee.
The innovation of the aforementioned bodies which was achieved through public private partnership (PPP) policy applauded by the stakeholders and public is the same now being roundly rejected in the case of the NYSC. Whereas the WAEC and JAMB charge fees outside the online service, this is the first time the NYSC is asking prospective corps member to part with their money to pay for a service which is beyond its capability to render free of charge.
Even when the NYSC management has made a statement to the effect that the service was optional, some pseudo mathematicians have already calculated that the scheme would be “smiling to the bank with no less than 1.2 billion every year” so, even if only one hundred or one thousand subscribed to the service in a year, the vault of NYSC must be overflowing with N1.2 billion.
I don’t know much about the organisation called Education Rights Campaign, ERC but part of its statement quoted in the write-up in The Punch of Tuesday, September 23 , 2014 page 43 reads: “progress should mean easing of burden; not the other way round. More so technology to be deployed for the online registration and processing of call-up letters by prospective corps members is not something from heaven. The technology exists here in Nigeria. It is the same technology already used for online registration in schools and it is beyond what the NYSC, which has enormous annual budgets, can provide at no extra cost…”
One would readily agree with the ERC that progress should mean easing of burden and how else could the NYSC ease the burden of the mobilisation process for prospective corps if not by reducing the tedium and hazards associated with the process. The rest of the statement above is merely pedestrian assumption often resorted to by lazy and ill or uninformed unionist and critics wherever they wanted to play to the gallery. The technology already exists here in Nigeria. True. But, is it free or cheap? “It is the same technology already used for online registration in schools. Which schools? For free? Or how much? That it is not beyond what the NYSC, which has an ENORMOUS annual budget (emphasis online) can provide at as extra cost. “In an era when information is readily and promptly given on demand by government ministries and agencies, this is a great disservice to the public who would have wanted to know the enormity the budget and its breakdown so as to determine what amount is available to render the proposed online mobilisation “at no extra cost” but which NYSC Board and management were trying to pocket by charging a fee for the service.
The public private partnership (PPP) model is being used by many public institution and organisations in the country to render efficient, effective and affordable service for which they lack the requisite human and material capital. This is exactly what the Board and Management of the NYSC are trying to do after many years of consultations with stakeholders
The managers of the scheme are Nigeria who are deeply aware of the challenges parent face in trying to give their children tertiary education. I do want to believe that decision to introduce the fee-paying online mobilisation for prospective corps member after duly testing the waters is ‘venal clandestine, criminal or fraudulent as some of the commentators claimed. If the fee is considered too high, the corps should be advised or even prevailed upon to meet with its partners to discuss a downward review. But I think the introduction of the online mobilisation has come at the right time.
I also want to think that we should address issues on their own merit. I wouldn’t know what the killing of corps members in Plateau and Bauchi States have to do with the proposed online mobilisation fee or the scheme itself. Most Nigerians, from opinion polls conducted from time, to time, lauded the introduction of the scheme.
I challenge anybody or group who disagrees with this to conduct their own independent popularity poll and be courageous enough to publish their findings. Those who were responsible for the killing of the corps members in Plateau and Bauchi States, reprehensible criminal acts which have become criticism reference point, do not reside in the NYSC. They are people who have suddenly realised in their own warped estimation that we can no longer live together as one united country. When the Yakubu Gowon administration created the NYSC in 1973 after the 30-month civil war it was to evolve a Nigeria where every citizen would take as home wherever he lived. Forty one years after, there is hardly anybody to speak up for Nigeria; the voices mostly heard are those for ethnicity or religion. Those who instigated the killing of corps members in Plateau and Bauchi States carried out ethnic and religious agenda.
Is it the fault of the NYSC managers that the programme has been “adulterated”? At inception for example, the orientation programme used to hold according to the time table without outside interference. Today, the scheme can no longer hold the orientation course during the month of Ramadan in order not to incur the wrath of the Sultan of Sokoto and the Muslim leadership as if the exercise would strip the participants of their holiness.
This writer had their orientation course in the month of Ramadan in August 1978 at the Argungu Fishing Festival Village in the Old Sokoto State and I remember we visited the then Sultan Abubukar Sidiqque and he had words of encouragement for us. He did not raise issues with the NYSC authorities for conducting the exercise during the Muslims’ holy month.
The scheme was free to deploy corps members without any hindrance, but today there are long lists of request from all segments of the society-right from the presidency down to the smallest group-dictating where such corps members should be deployed. The records are at the NYSC Directorate Headquarters should any group or individuals disagree with this assertion.
Is this any reason why you would want the NYSC scrapped? Then you must also call for the scrapping of almost all the public institutions and agencies of government. Many of the graduates from universities and polytechnics now can hardly express themselves in good English. We are being told of soldiers sent to the war front to fight the enemy but who tactically found themselves elsewhere. All these because of the external interference in the admission and recruitment exercise respectively, for example. Do we scrap the institution? I guess your answer is no. The problem with our public institutions are not created by the managers; they are by those who think those institutions must always do their biddings even if they are not in the national interest. And unless this culture of disregard of national aspiration is tamed we would continue to shift blames for our failures.
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