NYSC twisted

I got involved in an argument on sunday evening and I was really inspired. The topic was quite vast or rather unreachable, wrapped around
Nigerian politics, the just concluded presidential elections and the INEC, comparison of past administrations to the just two months old incumbent administration, the NYSC scheme and its significance or insignificance, in fact the argument raged and raged.

I was at a friend’s child dedication close to my neighborhood where I was taking advantage of an evening relaxation with my cousin who had just visited. Right in front of me was a group of young men, of course who I was quite familiar with as we were all invited to the same occasion, arguing about Nigerian affairs. Naturally, am always drawn to constructive arguments and I could be very loud when I need to be.

Initially, I and my cousin were seated a few steps away listening to what I thought at first was crappy and shallow arguments.

Well, the NYSC scheme topic caught my interest the most. Perhaps because it has formed major part of my observation lately. One man argued that the sense behind the NYSC scheme does not meet up any longer with the present reality Nigeria is facing, hence it should be scrapped and Federal government should rather channel the fund towards other more pressing issues in the country. He continued in his argument that it would have been better for youths if the scheme was not made compulsory, or rather if companies did not require the certificate obtained from the scheme as one of the major prerequisites for employment. He pointed out that the major aim of carving out the scheme in the first place was to facilitate the 3Rs resolution after the civil war (i.e Reconciliation, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation), and that lately the scheme is no more relevant regarding that end, perhaps true. He further suggested that Nigeria rather than wasting one year of Nigerian youths should draw an estimate of what is spent on each corp member and issue them cheque to start up something immediately they have just graduated from their various higher institutions without wasting their precious time.

But someone maybe missing something somewhere. Sincerely, I can’t imagine what that would have been like. Actually I applaud Nigeria which is one of the very few countries that have such scheme for standing by it over these years even though it has nearly turned to a caricature of what it is originally meant to be. I would rather subscribe to adjustment of the scheme and its functionality than scrapping it totally which would do more harm than good.

In the real sense, the NYSC scheme is beyond the 3R agenda upon which it was crafted. The impacts of the NYSC scheme on  Nigerian youths cannot be overemphasized. It is one part of Nigeria’s domestic affairs that has made Nigeria unique.  Sensitization of Nigerian graduates is highly necessary in solving most of the national challenges confronting us. The various skill acquisition programs and the trending sense of entrepreneurship have capitalized the goals of NYSC scheme which aims to tackle the high rate of unemployment. Now, the target is Nigerian graduates who would graduate and have no job waiting for them in their front door. It’s understandable that not everyone likes the sound of business as a means of livelihood. Yeah, we all want that ‘white collar’ or government job that we would always get an alert at every end of the month and stuff. Me too I want that but we haven’t considered a lot of other stuff. We haven’t considered the decline in our crude oil price and the consequence it is likely to have in the running of our government which has began to manifest bit by bit. Due to the decline in crude oil prices, allocation to states have been cut short, and evidences show that if the price of crude oil continue to fall, the allocations would cut further, and when this happens, states wouldn’t  have that much allocation to meet up with its budgets including payment of salaries. The situation in Osun state is a typical sad example, and the so-called government workers are the ones bearing the burden.

I would also like to point out how ineffective and unproductive most tiers of the civil service in Nigeria has become. This can simply be ascertained when some unions may insist to go on strike for ‘some’ reasons, after few months of their strike there would be nothing to show as some kind of deformity the government might face without them. Because of this weakness, the government now has the power and will to decide if and when they get paid. With this, they no longer earn salaries but merely compensation allowance. All these are discouraging.

The reality is that anything you can earn money from, whatever it is, whichever office you operate on doing it, is business at the end of the day. There has to be some kind of transaction somewhere, who renders service to who and who pays what to who for service rendered whether directly or indirectly. That is the ideal sense of business. The only difference with small regular businesses is the ideal environments and modes of transactions that may be accrued to the bigger businesses or rather well established businesses which is often owned by private individuals.

‘Entrepreneurship’ is the new dawn. The NYSC scheme has become a platform where by focus can be laid on Nigerian youths who have just graduated from the university to groom and sensitize them so they can have vast sense of business and entrepreneurship.

Instead of scrapping the NYSC scheme from national agenda, I would rather suggest that it should taken more seriously and monitored. It’s objectives and effectiveness has been ignored over the years so much that it is now considered a medium to fulfill all righteousness  by most youths in other to be eligible to secure a job.

Normally, the NYSC scheme is meant to have four agendas which includes; the 3weeks camp orientation, the primary assignment, community development service and lastly winding up and the passing out. Each of these stages have their significance according to how the scheme was designed, let it be brought back to effectiveness. There is so much the scheme could still achieve even in the future but let the platform remain. Let young graduates take advantage of the scheme and figure out their talents. Let the federal government recruit more competent and experienced NYSC staff to nurture and regulate the program.

What’s your resolve to this? Please react. Jerry Odii.