THE FUTURE OF NYSC…2

Continued from yesterday

The programme is due for a comprehensive review

Despite our opposition to the idea of scrapping the scheme, reforming the NYSC will imply a trimmed programme. This could require that prospective users of corps members may have to guarantee them post-service employment or engage them on a two or three-year contract as part of a national policy. In that case, the allowances paid by government for the selected corps members can be advanced to organisations that request for corps members as contribution to a universal graduate employment scheme.

While we understand the emotional subtext of the moment, we believe it is more useful to fix, rather than scrap, NYSC. The national integration argument of the scheme has not been overtaken, as recent events around the country show. But we need to ensure that corps members are well protected wherever they may be posted. Just as we also need to ensure that NYSC can provide added value, and that it is aligned with the current needs of the country and its participants. Which is why we find it more appealing that NYSC be reformed to ensure overall effectiveness and efficiency. Such reform package could focus on five inter-related areas: security, funding, branding, content, and structure. It will also involve the reform of the current approach of the major but compromised milestones in the life of corps members—from mobilisation, through orientation, primary assignment, community development to passing out.

Posting corps members to areas of urgent national needs will offer the country multiple dividends. One, it will allow for better and a more even deployment of manpower and ensure focus and greater contribution to national development. Two, by ending the specter of rejected and under-utilised corps members, it will improve the self-esteem of participants and ensure that corps members serve their country with dignity. And three, it will restore the spirit of national service to the scheme.

However, the real test is in overcoming natural resistance and establishing robust structure for effective implementation. Among other imperatives, the supervisory ministry (Youth and Sports) and NYSC need to liaise with security agencies to ensure that corps members are and feel secure where they serve, offer incentives and capacity upgrade to perform well in new roles, ensure development of useful work-programmes so that corps members are fully engaged, sequence the reform components in a strategic manner, and communicate the reform effectively.

Another alternative is to make the NYSC the basis of a new compulsory military service scheme. Under this programme, all graduates will be required to serve in the military and police for a compulsory specified number of years after graduation. At the end of it, they will have the option of making a career in the military or earning honourable discharge which should give them preference when seeking subsequent employment opportunities. Those who opt to make careers in the armed forces would be used to progressively raise the standard of our military and police services to replace the present predominance of illiterates that have complicated the work of internal security and national defence. The prospect of an elite national defence force should interest those concerned with our resent disorderly state of internal security.

Whatever the preferred option, the point remains that the NYSC is overdue for a thorough review and reform or both. However, we believe that we should review the scheme in a manner that helps to alleviate the unemployment situation. We need a programme that allows young graduates to gain a breather in some form of government supported employment while they scout for better opportunities. But they should be engaged in sectors where they are needed, and where they will add value to our national development effort.