SIR
The insistence of the management of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to post new corps members to any state in the country shows how those in authorities value citizens’ lives. With the federal government’s obvious cluelessness on how to tackle the Boko Haram menace that is tearing the country apart, it will amount to
insensitivity of the highest order for any government agency to send educated Nigerian youths to crises prone areas.
Just recently, President Jonathan in a live national TV broadcast told a bewildered nation that he could not travel to Boko Haram states in a helicopter for security reasons. It is in this same country that some overzealous and misguided government officials are insisting that those who represent the future of the country must go to observe their mandatory one year national service.
NYSC seems to have forgotten in a hurry the Bauchi massacre of 2011 where close to 20 corps members were hacked to death by some religious extremists. Many families are still nursing the wounds of this incident especially in the southern part of the country where parents toil day and night, sell all they have and go a-borrowing to ensure that their children graduate from higher colleges.
To the Boko Haram members and their high profile sponsors, “western education is sin.” Why will NYSC send “sinners” to where they will be killed by those who confess that the more sinners they kill, the bigger their reward?
On most occasions when government officials display obstinacies like this, they are up to a game. It is either they are blowing someone else’s flute and/or there is money to be made or stolen; for the NYSC’s insistence, it is the both. It is not unlikely that the NYSC officials or the NYSC management is using this as a tool to upscale the bribes they collect twice every year from the candidates lobbying to be posted to a particular place.
NYSC like all other agencies of the Nigerian government is also deeply enmeshed in the corruption that has turned the nation’s albatross.
After the unfortunate incident of 2011, as the usual government empty promises, President Jonathan and the bribe infested National Assembly assured the nation that the NYSC, which was established in 1973 by Yakubu Gowon government to begin the process of reintegration after the civil war, will be redesigned and reorganized to prevent future waste of human lives. Sadly, there is nothing on the ground to show that the government has lifted a pebble in this direction.
The government can make it voluntary for those that like risky adventures or in the alternative, spell out a comprehensive security arrangement backed up by world class life insurance for candidates that are forced to go there. The governors of Boko Haram states must sign undertakings that no harm will come near corps members posted to their states. NYSC can also create special incentive for members that are
willing to go after all, this is the reason many African immigrants accept to join US Army to fight in Iraq, Afghanistan and other warring countries.
The southern governors should also make their position known on this issue; they may keep silent if they are pleased with the bodybags that are being parceled to them in the past two years as a result of the Boko Haram killings. Parents and guardians must also resist the attempt to force postings on their children if they value their lives and consider the sufferings they undergo to see them through colleges. The media, religious bodies, parents/teachers associations, traditional rulers and Human Rights Groups/NGOs should rise up in support of corps members that refuse their postings to Boko Haram states at least now that the federal government is yet to figure out how it intends to solve the problem; the recent cosmetic change of guards in the nation’s security apparatus notwithstanding.
source:
Sunday Odeleke
Houston TX USA.
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