REUBEN ABATI
Peter F. Drucker, the Austrian-American management guru (1909 -2005), it was who opined that change is an inevitable constant in human situations and that innovation is important in the 21st Century where skills become obsolete at the speed of light and what was deemed essential yesterday sooner or later becomes irrelevant, requiring new thinking, new styles, new modes to remain relevant and to gain new knowledge. But the proposed plan by the Federal Government of Nigeria to reform the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme does not fit into this pattern. It is a classic case of majoring in the minors, a misplaced priority, a wasteful adventure whose long-term subliminal objective may be mere self-enrichment that would not change much but rather cause unwanted confusion. The Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration has advertised itself as a reform-minded administration. But certain reforms do not come across as a priority and this NYSC reform is one of such thoughtless propositions like, if we may cite an earlier example, the decision to revert to the old Nigerian National Anthem. I watch people at public events, they sing along most reluctantly because there was no consensus nor has there been any buy-in, that Nigeria needed to change its National Anthem. It is important that policies are not enacted or revised simply to satisfy the personal fancy or the whims of anyone no matter how highly placed. In the case of the NYSC, nobody was consulted. We woke up one morning only to be told by the Minister of State for Youth Development, Ayodele Olawande that a decision had been taken to reform the NYSC programme. Nobody needs NYSC reform.
The NYSC is 53 years old. Established in May 1973, by the Yakubu Gowon military administration, it was a post-civil war measure in pursuit of the objectives of the three Rs: Reconciliation, Rehabilitation, and Reconstruction, to reintegrate Nigerians and reunite them and heal the wounds of the civil war. The fratricidal war divided Nigeria and watered the seeds of ethnicity and difference. Over 50 years later, the wounds are yet to heal. The NYSC was an attempt at reconciliation. It started with the posting of graduates of tertiary institutions to cities and states far away from their homes, and places of graduation, to allow them live among other people, get to understand Nigeria and learn to serve Nigeria selflessly. The emphasis was on service. When the late sage, Chinua Achebe wrote that “there was once a country”, the NYSC was part of that effort at the making and remaking of Nigeria. It is the case that when the country began to fail on all fronts in terms of security, institutional integrity, increased ethnic and religious division, a group of Nigerians began to agitate that the NYSC was no longer serving its purpose and it should be scrapped. Except that the problem is not with the scheme but the Nigerian factor: the inbred tendency by those in charge to minimize every good thing and ruin it. It is instructive that the Tinubu administration is not contemplating an abandonment of the scheme. Apart from the fact that this would be a disservice to the father of the NYSC, General Yakubu Gowon, who is still alive, it would amount to an unconscionable erosion of a significant aspect of collective public memory. Those who participated in the scheme in the earlier days have fond memories.
On Saturday, during a radio programme, Professor Seun Omotayo, a Professor of Sports Psychology, currently based in Ghana, recalled that when he completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Ibadan, he was posted for National Service in Ogun State. He was not happy that he was being sent to his home state. He personally went to the NYSC office in Lagos, and asked to be posted to the Northern part of Nigeria. I doubt if anyone would request for such a change of posting these days. On Sunday, I had a conversation on the NYSC with Emeritus Professor Duro Oni of the University of Lagos in the course of which he held the view that the NYSC remains relevant to Nigeria’s growth and development. The NYSC gave him his wife. He met her when she came to participate in the scheme in Lagos. Today, the woman from Ogoja in Cross River state has given him four sons and six grandchildren. “I probably would never have met her if there was no NYSC.” There are many Nigerians who have a similar experience: inter-ethnic marriages being one of the gains of the NYSC. Those who would probably never have left their home towns discovered Nigeria through the eyes and experience of other Nigerians and communities. Life-long friendships have been formed over the years. I know Chief Shedrack Akolokwu from Omoku-Ogba in Rivers State, for example. I was a young secondary student when he came to serve Nigeria in Abeokuta, Ogun State. He was so much part of the community. He and I have remained in touch over the years. The last time I saw him in Port Harcourt, he was asking after everybody in the neighbourhood, mentioning each person’s name as if he left Abeokuta yesterday and it has been over 45 years since he participated in the NYSC. My service year was spent in Benin City, old Bendel state. A few years ago, I found myself in Benin, I quickly asked the driver to take me to the compound where I lived. I also went to the Department where I was a graduate assistant at the University of Benin, reliving old memories. I find it shocking therefore that one of the reforms being proposed by the Tinubu administration is that corps members may not be posted to conflict areas where insecurity may be a challenge, to ensure safety and reduce the anxiety of parents. Only indigenes of those areas or graduates of schools in such locations would be sent there. This defeats the fundamental objective of the NYSC: to promote unity and open up Nigeria unto its young persons. And who the hell came up with the twisted logic that graduates and indigenes from conflict zones are better off in those zones? Every life is important. No Nigerian, whether a graduate or not, should be exposed to danger. It is the duty of government to address the challenge of insecurity and make every part of Nigeria safe for all.
Minister Olawande also said the NYSC uniform will be changed although a final decision on this has not yet been taken. But the government is considering Ankara or the adire batik fabric. The idea is to promote locally made fabrics and support the Nigerian textile industry. I dare say that there is nothing wrong with the current NYSC uniform. The khaki fabric and the vest are more durable than either Ankara or adire that would start fading, or get torn within a short while. The proposal is also likely to evoke ethnic comparison and sentiments. Adire batik is largely produced in the South Western part oof the country, made for the most part in Ogun, Osun and Kwara states. It may be dismissed as an opportunity to create business for only one part of the country. Igbos are likely to demand that the ishiagu should also become part of the NYSC uniform. Northerners are likely to ask for babanriga in the spirit of Federal Character. Other ethnic nationalities may also make a case for their own local attires. Nobody needs such confusion. What can be done is to improve the quality of the present uniform. In our time, the khaki had better quality, the vest and the boots too, but these days, the uniform is so poorly made, its cheapness is unmistakable.
The orientation camp for the NYSC, we are told, will be extended from four to six weeks, and the deployment will be restructured based on choices and processes during the camp, as the new NYSC will offer 11 specialized streams ranging from agriculture, education, technology and digital, healthcare, infrastructure, public service, legal, paramilitary and the security, the economy to enterprise. Corps members will be required to choose any of these streams where within six weeks they can be trained in entrepreneurial skills and prepared for the job market. We are missing the point. The NYSC orientation camp is not a training school. It is meant to be an experience. If the plan is to teach entrepreneurship, that should have been done at the university level. It is the college curriculum that needs to be reviewed, and entrepreneurship built into the various disciplines in order to ensure a proper alignment between scholarship and the labour market, for a purposeful school to work transition. In its original design, the NYSC was meant to provide para-military training, and inculcate the values of discipline and service. Indeed, there is nothing new about the six-week proposal. During the 1990/91 batch, corps members spent six weeks in camp, and were even taught how to handle small arms and light weapons. But the military government soon abandoned the idea out of fear that the state may have unwittingly been training potential coup plotters. The so-called streams actually exist. In our time, corps members were assigned to specific responsibilities: persons who manned the kitchen prepared the meals and served others, some corps members served as Platoon commanders while everyone marched, we had press club, drama club and it all worked out smoothly. Part of the reform is to place the NYSC under civilian leadership. Under the present arrangement, the Director General may be from the Education Corps of the Nigerian military but at the state level, the NYSC secretariats are manned by civilians, and so changing the headship of the scheme will not make much difference as long as standards are maintained.
What the Federal Government needs to do is to make the NYSC experience richer and more exciting for those who participate in it. The monthly allowance for corps members should be increased, feeding at the orientation camps should be improved upon. Scrap the monthly Community Development exercises. Ensure that the orientation camps are properly secured to eliminate the risk of bandits and terrorists attacking those camps to kidnap corps members. Corps members should be deployed to places of primary assignment relevant to their fields of study. There is no point changing from passing out parade to graduation ceremony. Will corps members now wear graduation gowns? That is not necessary. Will the proposed reforms modernize the NYSC? No. Will they improve employability? I don’t think so.
There are far more important and urgent issues that the Federal Government should be concerned about at this moment. One, the terribly embarrassing disclosure that a certain Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi Matthew set up a fake Presidential Agency – the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council (PFIPC) and Presidential Economic Advisory Council (PEAC) – which the Presidency now disclaims as a scam operation, and yet the said Prince had been operating openly – meeting with key government officials, receiving ambassadors in audience, and running an office at the Federal Secretariat that was duly allocated to him by the Office of the Sectary to the Government of the Federation. He has over 300 staff including Directors who are all on government payroll. His fake agency even got N1.3 billion allocation in the 2026 Budget. He runs 39 bank accounts and even has accounts with the Central Bank of Nigeria. He has since been charged to court, and his matter comes up on July 27. The man is in no way apologetic. He says he has a letter of appointment and that he paid N600 million to the President’s Chief of Staff, Rt. Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, to get appointed. Trouble started when his sponsor wanted a lion share of the budgetary allocation to his office. He says one Babatunde Tanimola facilitated his appointment but now the Tanimola died in a hotel room in Abuja just before he, Adeniyi was arrested in November 2025. Indeed, who knows tomorrow?
What we know today is the spectacle before us: a spectacle of institutional failure, incompetence, collusion, corruption and the failure of due process. If it is possible to manufacture a non-existent government agency, and operate openly and brazenly, then there are persons within the entire government machinery that must answer questions. A thorough investigation must be conducted to find out if there are other similar agencies in the Federal Capital Territory. Prince Adeniyi’s boldness is so shocking. He should have his day in court. .He should be allowed to say all that he knows, and no attempt whatsoever should be made to intimidate him. It is wrong, as the police reportedly did yesterday, to arrest Adeniyi’s father in lieu. Policemen allegedly stormed his parents’ home in Ogbomoso and arrested his father and a family friend. It is illegal to do so. Criminal liability is personal. It is not transferable in the light of Section 7 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA), 2015. The Nigerian Police not knowing this is scandalous.
The other urgent issue would be the observation by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that the Nigerian government has frittered away 2% of GDP (about N8.8 trillion) on off-budget spending. The prompt reaction from the Minister of Finance, Taiwo Oyedele is to deny and insist that Nigeria does not have any ghost budget. This does not call for bluffing. The same government that introduced Executive Order 9 to ensure transparency and accountability in government finances should take allegations of hidden deficit, opaqueness and failure of oversight more seriously. Finally, it is about time Nigeria took South Africa to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on its request for compensation over xenophobia losses, the genocide in South Africa and that country’s institutionalization of hatred. On the question of NYSC reform, it is in the best interest of the Nigerian government to listen to the people’s responses and retrace its steps forthwith.
