The debate over the desirability or otherwise of the computerisation process of the call-up for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has again exposed a grievous shortcoming in our approach to topical issues. The debate is specifically focused on the fees of N4000 that prospective corps members who wish to print their call-up letters online are required to pay while other facts and component about the initiative are conveniently disregarded. This fixation on the cost, which has been interpreted as the NYSC asking fresh graduates to pay before they can serve the nation, is not the issue for me.
The issue is the now entrenched penchant of some Nigerians to decide for others in manners that are at best the intellectual equivalent of mob action or lynching. In this case, the prospective corps members have scarcely been allowed a say in the matter. After all, they and their parents are the ones who are directly affected in this matter. Career critics, some of whom completed their youth service before the oldest person among this incoming batch of corps members was born, are insistent on the scheme sticking to the old ways of doing things even when there are proven innovations that can make things better.
The NYSC has assured that it studied trends in addition to feedback from past and present corps members to arrive at the decision to computerise the call-up process. It has also repeatedly stressed that payment to print the letter is optional. So why is the law of demand and supply not allowed to determine whether this exercise succeeds or fails based on its adoption by those it is meant for?
Certainly, there are those who live in the same city their alma mater is located in with bus fares to and from the school being below N1000 so it may not be logical to print the letter online for four times that amount especially if the person in question is a borderline indigent. Next are those who want to catch up with friends or have that last time tryst with old flames in addition to those who have to recover the soft loans extended to friends during the economic crunch that characterizes the last days on campus – call-up letters collection point is usually a nice point to apprehend elusive debtors. One can add to this growing list those who are too estranged from their parents that any opportunity to travel away from home is always welcome.
Then there is the other side of the equation led by those for whom the N4000 is a fraction of the travel costs to pick up the call-up letter from schools that may be the whole of 14-hour drive from the city in which they are resident. Also included on this list are those who have phobias for plying our roads for any reason, some of them dread the roads enough that they don’t travel during the breaks in between semesters and only venture back home at the end of sessions. Some will still rather quietly print their letters by themselves even if the trip to and from their schools cost less than N500 – the desire to avoid the queues and sometimes unpleasant memories and friends that trigger them is enough impetus for this type.
What right do we have collectively then to dictate or impose what those who fall into either category must adopt? If the online printing of call-up letters is mandatory then those who prefer a trip to the school would have been short changed. Those who will rather print the letter on their own terms would also have their choice taken away if the system reverts to the old way. So what the NYSC did in providing options is the best.
Should this debate continue, those who will be making contributions will do well not to make it look like a lynch-mob affair. This they can do by speaking against the background of facts that respect the rights of those affected by the exercise. Fortunately, these facts are available in the public space.
The NYSC has never been responsible for paying the transport fare of prospective corps members when they go to collect their call-up letters. They only become the organisation’s responsibility when they have been duly registered in orientation camps. It will thus be illogical to expect that the cost of getting the same letter online be borne by another entity other than the recipient who would have shouldered the cost of transportation with attendant risks to pick up same.
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