If I were president…
National Youth Service Corps is a product of General Yakubu Gowon and fell under the re-integration policy of his administration. Founded in 1973, it had objectives among others, to enable its products, the students, the opportunity of exchange of cultures, promotion of unity among the diverse ethnic groups in Nigeria. By the time a westerner […]
National Youth Service Corps is a product of General Yakubu Gowon and fell under the re-integration policy of his administration. Founded in 1973, it had objectives among others, to enable its products, the students, the opportunity of exchange of cultures, promotion of unity among the diverse ethnic groups in Nigeria. By the time a westerner travels to the north for his one year compulsory national service, he will learn to appreciate and tolerate the culture and ways of living of others and vice versa.
Students from various tertiary institutions and various ethnic nationalities in the country are camped and trained for a period of time and sent out on primary assignments. With monthly allowances they commence the one year national assignment. An old cliché calls it “Now your suffering continues” if you permit me, this is the premise I build my write-up. It is my candid belief that it has outlived its usefulness, purpose and objectives.
Today, students start lobbying for juicy places right from the orientation camps and the rural areas now becomes a-no-go area therefore destroying the essence of the service. Some states today are labeled troubled states leading to rejection by corpers and their establishment. A case in point is Plateau and other northern states where they are socially abused and sometimes killed. Students exchange programme would have been an available alternative but it will become an elitist affair, not going down to the rural and the disadvantaged group of the society.
If I may proffer an alternative to the establishment and continued existence of the NYSC which have been over flogged and weak, firstly, we could mandate universities to have catchment area i.e. students from Plateau state are required to go to school in Rivers state and students from Rivers state are required to come to school in Plateau state. By so doing, they will have four or five years in their course of choice to be absorbed in to the culture and thereby achieving the objectives of the NYSC even more succinctly. We can then re-purpose the finances we have been pouring into the NYSC by introducing Financial Education as a course-elective or major. This would educate them on the need to invest wisely in shares, stocks, setting up small scale enterprises, establishing a business and wealth creation thus solving to a large extent, the menace of unemployment after school and after the compulsory one year national service. We can borrow from Ghana where their students are trained in trades and crafts right from secondary to tertiary level. At the end of the business education course, students will be made to submit a project proposal based on the area of their specialization. Considering the amount of money spent to camp the NYSC members for three weeks (i.e. clothing, feeding and accommodation etc) not to mention the money paid to them as allowances all through the duration of their service if put together and channeled to them in form of soft loans, will comfortably reposition them for their challenges after graduation.
Achieving vision 2020 will be a reality in this direction as unemployment will be reduced and an improved national economic growth will be realized. National Youth Service Corps is a laudable project that has in recent times gone against the aims and objectives of its establishment, leading to youth restiveness, social vices, unemployment and above all ,religious and economic divide in the country that warrants its replacement for the unity of Nigeria to be attained.
Ponsel is of No 3, Raphael Davou Street, Rayfield, Jos, Plateau State.