Why NYSC Will Not Be Scrapped – Minister

• JOHN OBA

The Minister of Youths Development, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, in this interview with a select group of journalists, speaks on the National Youths Service Corp (NYSC) and other sundry issues. John Oba was there for LEADERSHIP. Excerpts:Too many problems seem to bedevil the NYSC, leading to calls in some quarters for the entire scheme to be scrapped. Do you subscribe to such calls? To scrap the NYSC is to accept that the scheme has outlived its usefulness. We do not think that NYSC has outlived its usefulness. The scheme was set up primarily to achieve national integration and to create avenues for young people tocontribute meaningfully to the development of the country. I don’t think anybody can argue that Nigeria no longer has a need in these two areas. The challenges of national integration and unity, despite the success that the NYSC has achieved, are still as relevant as they were 39 years ago. Also, there are critical areas where Nigeria needs to be served by its young people today. Take the area of the Millennium Development Goals, where Nigeria needs to catch up with the rest of the world. The issue of employment for young people is also one of the biggest challenges facing our country today. Now how does the NYSC fit into this? The scheme ensures that we have a captive pool of a quarter of a million young people that we can prepare for life after school. So, if nothing else, the opportunity that the scheme provides to prepare young people for critical transition between the life of schooling and that of work makes the scheme very pertinent and relevant. It is so easy to scrap anything. But the leadership challenge at this time is to make NYSC more effective. Why is there a need to reform NYSC and why now?NYSC, as we all know, was established after the civil war as one of the vehicles for national integration. After existing for so long, it is important for us to review the scheme against its original objectives and the prevailing realities in the country. We need to make NYSC more relevant. We need to ensure that there is commensurate return on investment to all its stakeholders. Our initial research shows that people are querying the relevance of NYSC because they are no longer sure about the value the scheme is addingto the participating corps members, their families, and the country at large. This, for us, is a strong case for reform. So we need to reposition the NYSC, make it more effective, and align it with present realities. So, what and what are you doing to make the scheme more effective? We are looking at the scheme in a holistic way and trying to identify and confront issues that are standing in the way of its effectiveness. The first issue is the need to look at the areas where Nigeria needs to be served. Of course national integration is still relevant, but it is no longer a sufficient justification. We need value addition. Also we are looking at how to shift NYSC from something that people do because they cannot escape it to something that people look forward to. The only way we can answer both is to ensure that theprogramme adds value to the country and the participating corps members. On the value to the country, we need to redirect the energy of corps members into those areas where their energy is actually needed in the service of the country: education, rural health, infrastructure, and agriculture. What we have experienced over time is a decisive derailment where you find corps members serving in all kinds of places such as banks, oil companies, government ministries and all kinds of private businesses…Is there anything wrong with corps members serving in such places?Ordinarily, there shouldn’t be. But there are certain down-side effects and trade-offs. When you send corps members to places where they are not really needed, it means you are not deploying them to areas where they are really needed. So we miss the opportunity of optimally using this special resource to tackle urgent national challenges. It also means you are using public sector fund to subsidize private sector gains. There is nothing wrong with this if that was the intention of the scheme, but that is not the intention of the scheme. Of course I have heard all kinds of arguments about how private businesses avail the corps members the opportunity to learn and how serving with them gives corps members a leg into the world of work. But there are questions around that: are we not creating a disincentive for employment and are we redefining NYSC as an internship programme? As it is today, the NYSC is not an internship programme. It is a national service programme. That is what the law says. You recently said the NYSC reform is a comprehensive package, but we only hear of the posting policy… The posting policy is one aspect of the reform. This policy is to ensure that we concentrate the energies of corps members in four areas of urgent national needs. Another area of reform is the content of the orientation programme to ensure that beyond serving their country, corps members also get value from participating in the scheme. One of the key challenges that we are also aware of is that many of our graduates today leave their higher institutions with huge gaps in their skills, education, and competencies. We believe the NYSC can be used to bridge some of these gaps and the scheme can be turned into some sort of finishing school.Of course the big one is the issue of security of corps members, which has led to the desperate calls that the scheme be scrapped. Until recently, the security of corps members was never an issue. In fact, the NYSC uniform used to be a shield of protection. But unfortunately we have arrived at a point where that uniform could actually expose our corps members to danger. Like I said recently, no objective is worth the life of a corps member, because you can only serve your country or improve on your own abilitiesif you are alive. So, an important portion of the reform is how to improve the security of corps members. We are also looking into how to improve funding for the scheme. Funding is really critical. For example, majority of our orientation camps are dilapidated and uninhabitable. I have visited some of them and they are not just fit for people you are inviting to come and serve their country. Another area we are looking at is the reform of the NYSC itself, how to realign the organization and make it fit-for-purpose. It seems the major issue everyone is concerned about is the security of corps members. But it seems you are side-stepping this important issue…We are not. The security of corps members is very important to us, and as I mentioned earlier, the youth service scheme is not worth the life of anybody. But if we solve that problem, and every corps member is secure, is that enough? Does it mean we will be achieving the objectives of the scheme? Can we solve the problem of security and still solve other problems? Yes. The way I see it is that the security of corps members comes first. But I think it is possible to combine all— it is possible to secure corps members; it is possible to ensure corps members are deployed appropriately; and it is possible to give corps members the requisite skills they need to be more useful to themselves when they go out in the society. Let me share we you things we are doing to show that we are taking the security of corps members very seriously. One of the major initiatives we have taken is to develop a security alert system that maps the country—some kind of early warning—and to take decision on posting of corps members based on our awareness of the security circumstances in various locations. So we are not saying that because NYSC is national service, then we must post corps members to all parts of the country. Our pragmatic approach is to say wherever there are real or potential security challenges, we will not post corps members to such places. We will not have orientation camps in such places and not post corps members to such places until we have evidence of significant improvement. In addition to that, we want the governors of the affected states to give us clear assurance that they will guarantee the security of corps members. One example I will give you is the case of Niger State, which was one of the four states we decided that corps members will not be posted to during this current exercise. But the governor of Niger State came forward and made a strong case that corps members would be protected in his state. So the DG of NYSC went to the alternative venue provided for the orientation programme and we were satisfied that the new camping ground is secure and safe. We have also set up the NYSC Distress Call Centre to ensure that corps members in distress can call for and receive help on time. The call centre is connected to the operations of the police departments and other security agencies in the zones where the corps members are deployed. The third intervention, which has largely gone unnoticed, is to be sensitive to the mood of the country. For instance when we did the last passing-out parade, we just issued the certificate to the corps members so as not to make them easy targets for people who want to do mischief. We are also providing self-defense training to corps members. The new posting policy has taken off with this present batch of corps members. How is its implementation going?I am particularly impressed with the response we have received so far. Before we started this, many people expressed all kinds of concern. In fact we received some negative press on this. But I must say that since we got approval from President Goodluck Jonathan for its implementation and the commencement of the policy, the responses we have received have been really positive. It will surprise you that when I went to the NYSC orientation camp for the first batch of 2012, and I announced the policy and the rationale behind it,the corps members clapped. As you might know, corps members passed out of camp during the week, ordinarily the streets of Abuja would have been clogged with corps members roaming around with their luggage, looking for places to serve. But I have not seen any corps member roaming around. So if that is one thing we have been able to achieve with this policy, I think that is major. Normally when corps members leave the camp, they suffer, hanging around the streets, getting rejected from places they have been posted to and so on. This I think does something negative to their psyche, having gone to university for four/five years, then coming back to serve your country and getting rejected here and there. So I think we have succeeded to a very large extent in dealing with the problems of rejection of corps members, and the trauma they go through after leaving the camps. Let me give you example of Abuja Camp again. Normally each orientation programme in this camp has between 5000 to 6000 corps members, but this year we have a little over 3000. So in terms of the facilities in camp, and the opportunity for posting, we have reduced the number to what can be managed and absorbed. Then the issue of distorting the national integration component of the scheme has also been addressed by this new policy. Since the announcement was made, nobody has come to me to assist him or her in posting anybody. Normally by this time, I wouldprobably have two big bags of request letters from big men asking me to influence the posting of corps members. But after the announcement, the government issued a circular to the effect that no public official should get involved in lobbying for preferred positions for corps members. But there are people who are worried about limiting corps members to only four areas and denying them the opportunity to gain practical experience or get jobs after? You see in some countries, corps members are used only for military service. People don’t choose to do military service. But those countries decided that the area where they need young people to serve is in the military. In some countries they use corps members only for food production, or emergency relief services. You don’t make a choice based on your qualification to say you won’t serve where your country needs you. If you studied history, and your country needs you for disaster management or emergency relief, you do that for your country. That is why it is called national service. You don’t choose what you do when you go to serve. The country decides the area that it needs to be served. If Nigeria is faced with the problem of desertification today, and we need corps members to be planting trees, even if you studied nuclear physics, for that one year, you should plant trees and serve your country with pride. After that year you will move on to your field of training. So, when we sing the anthem: Youth obey the clarion call; let us lift our nation high; under the sun or in the rain; with dedication and selflessness; Nigeria is ours; Nigeria we serve. The NYSC Anthem captures everything. So the clarion call is come and teach, so obey it. The clarion call is come and help us to patch the road, so obey it. The clarion call is children and women are dying in the villages, come and help us administer primary healthcare, so obey it.