It’s almost a golden jubilee since the establishment of the NYSC scheme in the country. JOHN OBA examines their journey so far.
In his independence day anniversary broadcast on October 1, 1972, General Yakubu Gowon, then Head of State announced plans to establish the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) with a view to encouraging common ties among youths in the country.
The corps commenced operation on June 4, 1973. Six weeks later, the pioneer participants were mobilised to commence service. A total of 2,364 graduates from the then six existing universities started the programme.
Forty-six years after, the corps has grown in size pursuant to its mandate. From 2,364 at inception, it now mobilises over 300,000 participants yearly.
In the same vein, it has, extensively impacted positively on every aspect of the socio-economic development
by engendering national integration and unity. Over time, youths interact with their contemporaries from different parts of the country. This has orchestrated long lasting relationship and built bridges across cultural divides. Inter-tribal marriages have been contracted as a result of exposure of youths to the service corps.
Similarly, many former corps members settled in the states they were deployed to serve by pulled down the barriers of ethnic suspicions. In addition to national integration, corps members supplement manpower deficiency in academic institutions, health facilities, MDAs through the provision of infrastructure both in the urban and rural areas.
Areas of remarkable successes
The introduction of the skills acquisition and entrepreneurship programme into the service year remains an antidote against youth unemployment. It is designed to give corps members the opportunity to learn vocational skills of their choice right from the orientation camp through the service year.
Post camp training is facilitated by skill-trainers collaborating with the scheme at the places of primary assignment of corps members. In addition to this, through public/private partnership, the corps has completed the building and equipping of a 1,000 capacity integrated skills acquisition training centre in Gombe and another in Ekiti. These are to be replicated in each of the six geopolitical zones to enhance the training.
About 15,000 corps entrepreneurs among the corps members trained in the last three years under the SAED programme are known to have established and are sustaining different types of Small and Medium Enterprises.
Apart from the introduction of SAED programme, the Health Initiative for Rural Dwellers (HIRD) is among the new innovations of the scheme to enhance healthcare delivery and its relevance in national development. The intervention programme was launched in 2014 and serves as a platform through which it contributes towards addressing the health challenges of rural dwellers accessing health facilities across the country.
Under the programme, the scheme also carries out an annual nationwide week long medical outreach. From the inception of the programme to date, over 500,000 rural dwellers have been treated by the medical teams. Apart from the centrally coordinated outreaches conducted simultaneously nationwide, each NYSC state formation also mobilises the corps medical teams to conduct periodic outreaches to various communities.
In line with the government’s policy to diversify the economy, NYSC which ventured into agriculture in 1985, has started reinvigorating its agricultural projects with the establishment of integrated farm settlements in each of the six geopolitical zones of the country. Four of them located in FCT, Bauchi, Kebbi and Oyo states are equipped with modern farm implements and corps lodges.
Investigation shows that a number of corps members who served in these farms have taken up farming as a profession due to the practical experience they gained.
In furtherance of the efforts to encourage corps members to embrace skills and entrepreneurship for self-reliance, with the support of the federal government, the scheme floated ‘War Against Poverty (WAP) to empower corps members with agro-enterprise skills and interest-free loans for employment and wealth creation. At the end of the training, they were empowered with interest-free loans. So far, over 5,000 corps members have been fully empowered and are doing well as agro entrepreneurs.
Furthermore, the corps is in partnership with INEC in conducting elections in the country. The service corps has a subsisting MOU with the INEC for the participation of corps members as ad hoc staff of the electoral body in the conduct of elections. The MOU which is reviewed from time to time gives prominence to the safety of corps members and outlines the conditions to be met by government, INEC, security agencies and other stakeholders before they are drafted to participate in any election. It is on record that the participation of corps members has improved the credibility of the electoral process.
The scheme has equally been collaborating with the Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) on the Nigerian Graduate Volunteer programme (NGVP). Initially designed to provide manpower for the teaching of English and Mathematics in rural schools in Nasarawa, Kwara and Kano states, the programme has since been expanded in scope as volunteers now serve as Community Agricultural Extension Volunteers (CAEV) providing technical support to farmers in rural areas.
The partnership with European Union and the Pan African Institute for Global Affairs and Strategy (PAIGAS) is another programme evolved to address a major national challenge aimed at checking, through proper enlightenment, the increasing number of Nigerian youths involved in dangerous illegal migration to Europe and other parts of the world in search of greener pastures. Given that most youths who embark on these dangerous trips abroad do so due to lack of adequate information, the Corps volunteers trained by PAIGAS have taken the awareness campaign to their peers in their respective places of primary assignments and institutions of learning.
The NYSC has equally been pragmatic in addressing the challenge of the ever increasing corps population. Given the limited capacity of most camps, the management has been paying advocacy visits to state governments, whose duty it is to build and maintain orientation camps, to elicit their support by upgrading and expanding the facilities in the camps in order to accommodate the yearly increase in corps population. The response has been encouraging.
