FG Plans NYSC Reforms

The Minister of Youth Development Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, on Wednesday in Abuja, said that plans were underway to make the NYSC scheme go beyond mere national orientation.

The minister who spoke at an interview session with newsmen said the NYSC needed to be transformed for national service and rural development.

Abdullahi said that over the 38 years of the scheme, the aim had been just national orientation and integration, stressing that time had come when the scheme ought to become more beneficial.

He stressed that in as much as the nation still needed national integration; there was a need for corps members to also benefit from the scheme in terms of skills acquisition and knowledge.

“Beyond this, in 2012, we are saying that we must find other justification for the NYSC beyond national integration, even as important as national integration is.

“There is no point going to school for four years or five years or years then coming out to give one year of your life to the NYSC: a scheme that you consider to be a waste of time anyway as most young people think the NYSC is now.

“We have to transform the NYSC into an NYSC of national service and national development which was the original idea behind the NYSC; beyond national integration it’s also for rural development.

“When young people serve their country for one year, what do they get in return? So in that context, we say okay we can use that one year to also give certain skills to them that are marketable.”

The minister said that additional training to be received during the service year, such as business management courses, would help to fill some of the academic gaps some university and polytechnics graduates came out with after school.

He added that the vision of the ministry and that of the NYSC was a situation where when an applicant presented the NYSC discharge certificate, employers would be able to employ them due to the capacity acquired during the service year.

He hinted that there were MBA programmes that could be delivered in the course of the one-year service and as such, youths would have something tangible to present while searching for jobs after the service year.

The minister, however, stressed that the aim of transforming the scheme was not to de-emphasise national re-integration, stressing that there was now a growing need to emphasise national re-orientation and integration.

“The national youth service, 38 years after, is still as relevant today as it was then: Nigeria was coming out of the civil war and the NYSC was set up as a tool of national re-integration.

“A recent survey reported that only 25 per cent of Nigerian young people polled saw themselves first as Nigerians, more than 50 per cent actually identified themselves first with their religion, then their tribe.

“That makes it quite critical that we need to strengthen platforms like the NYSC for achieving national integration.”

Abdullahi also said that as part of the transformation, corps members would be posted to only four sectors of the economy considered relevant to the scheme and to national development.

He said that the usual practice where corps members were posted to banks, oil companies and other agencies to be exploited and dumped after the one-year service would be a thing of the past.

The minister, who declined to name the four sectors, said waivers would only be granted if it had been proved that an organization making request for the deployment of a corps member was prepared to employ such person after the service year.

“The NYSC is not an apprenticeship scheme; the NYSC is not an internship scheme; it is a service scheme and it is a compulsory service scheme.

“So we are going to make sure that the posting of NYSC would be to those sectors that Nigeria needs them; we have written to the relevant ministries, only four ministries; corpers will be posted only to four sectors now.

“So all these posting corpers to oil companies, posting corpers to Aso Rock, posting corpers to government house, will not happen anymore.”

Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State (left) discussing with Archibishop of the Niger Delta Diocese of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop Ignatius Kattey, during a special fasting and prayer session organised by the Rivers State Government in Port Harcourt, recently.