N.Y.S.C part 1

NATIONAL YOUTH SERVICE ORIENTATION PROGRAMME

There is an old Chinese proverb that says the only thing the government is good at is to remove or collect money from its citizen. In Nigeria what the government does best is to use the youth as cheap labour for their own personal agenda, brainwashing them into believing they are serving their country. This is the case of the National Youth Service Corps (N.Y.S.C). Serving the country is a very good policy but is the N.Y.S.C really meant for serving the country, or is it a case for the corrupt government to embezzle more money and get a perfect excuse for what they use the money for? The good question arises what’s the aim of N.Y.S.C.?

Discipline, you have to be disciplined. That’s the general slogan for any so-called patriot in the country. The average age of student graduating from university is 26, maybe in this modern age -23. So what happened to the discipline we have learnt over the years, i.e. during secondary and primary school?. Discipline is not an attribute you learn at 26. At this age you are a man thinking about future responsibilities. If they want the country to be discipline they should start from the man in the mirror, after all if they are so disciplined Nigeria will not be so corrupt. We wouldn’t hear about embezzlement every time on the television. I heard the amount allocated for each corps member is about 300 thousand naira just for the three weeks orientation. So why is the food so small and bad?, why is there no light in some camps?, why no water?, why no hospitals but just clinics (with inadequate or no drugs).

As if this suffering is not enough, the government announced N.Y.S.C corps members will be posted to only 4 sectors( Agriculture, Health, Education and Infrastructure) in which 90% of the corps member will be in educational sector. This is what I call Talent Wasting. Imagine an engineer who just graduated and who needs more practical work will waste a year teaching all in the name of “You are serving your country”, or a medical doctor who needs to be in a hospital will be teaching biology in a village secondary school.




continued with N.Y.S.C continuation