It is time to scrap the NYSC programme

It is time to scrap the NYSC programme
By Ikhide R. Ikheloa
July 9, 2011

The Nigerian National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme should be scraped. It would be a great way to honour the souls of the brave youth corps members who were brutally murdered in Northern Nigeria during the recently concluded elections. Judging by the NYSC's disgraceful looking website, those young souls have been forgotten. Please go to the awful website (http://www.nysc.gov.ng). There is no mention of that horrid episode in our country's history, not one mention.

The last news posted there was from 2009. The website features broken links and ancient information. It alleges that one Brigadier General Maharazu Ismaila Tsiga is the Director-General and Chief Executive of the scheme, but there is no way of confirming this; no Nigerian government website that I know of provides useful, usable information. If he is the Director-General, shame on him for running a shoddy programme, at least on the Internet.

The website has a search function and an alleged mail function for its staff members; try to use either and they laugh uproariously at you until they end up gasping in broken links. I was unable to download the only document on the site (‘The NYSC Decree'); I got an intriguing message announcing that the file is corrupted and cannot be repaired. Nigeria is not a serious country. Only in Nigeria can a programme that targets today's youth be so analogue.

The NYSC should be scrapped. If it is to continue (as perhaps the only source of income these unfortunate youth will ever get from my generation of thieving leaders) then members should be posted to their states of origin. It might force some of my ajebutter cousins to finally go see Papalolo in our village. Many of them can drive around Dubai blindfolded but cannot spell Ewu our hometown. There is the issue of equity; ever since the scheme was launched, Nigerians of means have always found ways to manipulate the postings to their children's advantage. These days, their offspring do not even smell those dishevelled campuses where children of the poor play at being "undergraduates." They are all abroad studying in real universities. Our leaders should be shot.

I performed my NYSC obligation decades ago in a place called Kagoro in Kaduna State simply because we could not find anyone in our vast extended family that knew someone that could post me to my father's compound. We were shuttled into a boarding school in Malali Village in Kaduna for our "orientation" where hung-over semi-literate soldiers took turns berating us for marching with two left feet. I had a wonderful time, I will not lie. I remember being paid a lot of money and not knowing what to do with the leftovers after the drinking. We got N90 bicycle allowance (actually Gulder beer allowance) and then they paid us N180 a month as graduate corps member. I taught at Kagoro Government Secondary School, Kagoro, a stone's throw from Kafanchan, the famous railway hub. I am sure those ancient trains are still loitering around that place.

I learnt a lot and I fell in love with the Hausa language. We made lots of friends and we were treated extremely well. I encountered discrimination once due to my ethnicity. I had gone to eat pounded yam in Kafanchan with two colleagues from Oduduwaland. When we got there the proprietor took one look at me and declared me to be "awon omo kobokobo" - a pejorative for an Igbo person. My friends, knowing that I understood Yoruba, quite gently tried to help by suggesting to her that I was an Omo Bendel. She shook her head and declared "Okan naa niwon" - "they are all the same!"

It is clear from reading the dated information on the NYSC website that not much has changed in terms of the vision and objectives of the program. In the absence of accountability, the NYSC programme has become an unsupervised afterthought for warehousing the dispossessed who just graduated from being mis-educated in Nigeria's institutions of "higher learning." It is time to stop the charade.

Nigeria's leaders do not listen to anything that does not have loot and money attached to it. Their nonchalance won't stop me from complaining. At the minimum, I would like to see the NYSC website taken down immediately and a competition started for the best designed website. The first thing they need to do is to put up a memorial of names and faces of all the brave corpers that fell in the line of duty this year. So we may never forget.

And they should take down the pathetic photograph of Brigadier General Tsiga the Director-General and replace it with something more pleasing to the eye. From my Kagoro experience, there is a core group of youth corps members out there that can put together a brilliant, sexy, content-rich website. We should dedicate them to revamping the website as "their community development." They are always on Facebook anyway. The Internet is their community, these digital natives. Ajuwaya!