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NYSC And the Quest for National Cohesion [column]Jul 22, 2011 (Daily Trust/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) -- Everyone who has truly served the mandatory one-year service of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme will readily admit its efficacy as a tool for national integration. Coming, as it were, on the heels of the three years bloody civil war, which almost tore the country apart, the scheme was conceived to provide young Nigerians with the opportunity to explore the beauty and to experience firsthand the diversity of the different cultures which make up the country. This was part of the larger scheme of the process of national healing, reconciliation, rehabilitation and reconstruction. After almost thirty eight years, the scheme may not have achieved all of its objectives, but it will be immodest of us to dismiss the NYSC as a total failure. Like every other institution in the country, the scheme has had its high and low points, and also not immune to inconsistencies and policy somersaults characteristic of our governments over the years. But if truth be told, NYSC has been able to weather the storm in spite of the increasing population of potential corps members and the perennially incapacitating logistic challenges. Just a fortnight ago, Brigadier General Maharazu Tsiga, the Director General of NYSC, reported at the pre-mobilization retreat in Kaduna that the scheme was going to admit into the ongoing 2011 Batch-B camp the largest number of corps members in the thirty eight-year history of its existence. The implication of this revelation is that NYSC will be stretched beyond imagination to be able to accommodate these desperate graduates. You will then wonder what the Federal government will do with over a hundred thousand desperate youths at any point in time if it succumbs to the mounting pressure of the ill-advised calls for the cancellation of the scheme. We seemed to down play the relevance of critical institutions in our country which are set up to bind us together and this is contributing to our down ward slide in the desired progress and development. No nation in the world progresses without strengthening its relevant critical institutions. A country that lacks clearly spelt out employment policy for its explosive unemployed population is thinking of not strengthening but sacking the only institution in the country that provides not only a meeting ground for all sensibilities which make up the country but also a passage between graduation and sojourn into the volatile and uncertain labour market. Events of the recent past such as communal strives, riots, bomb explosions and the post election crises which claimed the lives of so many innocent serving corps members sure poses soul searching questions about whether such sacrifices are worth taking for a country that treats the life and security of its citizens with levity. For the parents and loved ones of those who got caught up in these unfortunate incidences, this is a legitimate and inviolable question to ask. For hundreds others who died natural deaths at their places of assignment and those who succumbed to the fury and gluttony of our insatiable roads, who speaks for them or what will be the demand of their parents? For each of this group, no sacrifice shall be too great to make to this nation that we all love to call our own for the asking. In spite of the pain, the frustration and the pervading uncertainty, let's say yes today to Nigeria, and our collective response will go a long way in getting the country back onto the path of regeneration and renewal. As several million Nigerians, I served in the one-year mandatory NYSC scheme. What a wonderful and memorable experience that was! Perhaps the only time you can claim to hold a licence as a Nigerian is when you have gone and served in the NYSC scheme. And I can say with all sense of modesty as other Nigerians like me that NYSC made me a true Nigerian. The one-year call to service took me to Rivers State, the garden city, one of cities, sorry the geese that lays the golden egg for Nigeria. How can I ever miss the opportunity, even as a twenty two year old, to travel to see for myself this goose that lays the golden eggs? What on earth will stop one from going to see a city that is laced with gardens, or even to have a glimpse of the man who wrote A Forest of flowers? And about this time in Rivers State, it was not Mujahid Asari Dokubo, Ateke Tom or Tom Polo that got heard, it was MOSOP and the late writer and environmental activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa. While in Rivers State, the lead song in the camp, water carry them go, washed me to the coast of Ogoloma, my first posting; a town which then can only be accessed through the water as a result of the ongoing Okrika/Andoni riots. Somehow, I got a new posting to the Port Harcourt office of The Sentinel Magazine located along the Ikwerre Road. As soon as I submitted my posting letter to Ralph Egbu, the Port Harcourt Bureau Chief of the magazine, who later became Commissioner of Information and Secretary to the State government of Abia under Orji Uzor Kalu, he just threw a pen and a jotter at me and posted me straight to the Civic Centre where the state government was organising a Peace Carnival; and then to RUST, to NAFCON, Onne and to several other places afterwards, until The Sentinel closed shop unceremoniously. And then off I go again to Edeoha, the fondest of all my NYSC memories. Ula-Opata Community Secondary School was located here. Here in this school, I taught all the grammar, the vocabularies, the essays and compositions that I have ever learnt in school. I also taught the works of Chinua Achebe, Elechi Amadi (who was their own, being an Ikwerre) and Night Rain; and while there, I was truly like some fish doped out of the deep- thanks to John Pepper Clark. The only English teacher here was a certain Mr Uzoma, who read Geography/ Social Studies at NCE level. It was a great relief indeed for the school that I arrived. The Principal, Mr CC Olimini, gave me some good advice which I used to live peacefully in Edeoha town; a town which is one of many that constitute the Ekpeye Kingdom. How can I forget Mr Uzoma Okoro, who accommodated me; Mr. Wilson Wadago who dreamt of coming to live in the North; the Chief Priest, Chief Thankgod Atago, who taught me the culture and tradition of the Ekpeyes; and my amiable student and companion, Okwudiri Nebu, who must have taken a degree or two, and married. I couldn't have had the opportunity to gain this once-in-a-life-time experience about this equally great people and great Nigerians, if it were not for the platform that the NYSC offered. How then could anyone be a party to the ill-informed call for the scrapping of NYSC? |