The National Youth Service Scheme was set up in 1973 by the General Yakubu Gowon military regime. It was at the time the part of the 3Rs initiative which was drawn up to reconstruct, reconcile, and rebuild the country after a 3-year-long fratricidal war between 1967 and 1970.
The scheme was designed as a balm to heal the wounds of those affected by the civil war and address the deep-seated mutual distrust and resentment between Nigerians of eastern extraction and their fellow compatriots in the northern and southern parts of the country.
In the years that followed its establishment, the scheme recorded significant success and achieved its primary goal of reconciling Nigerians and uniting them. University and polytechnic graduates were sent to far-flung enclaves in different parts of the country, where they became acquainted with their compatriots in their host communities and bonded over meals and drinks that are, though alien to them, deepen their understanding of their country. They experience rich cultures and participate in traditions that disabuse their mind of longheld stereotypes of other tribes and ethnic groups.
Corps members played a key role in the growth and development of their host communities and, by extension, the nation. They fill a vacuum created by misgovernment and poor leadership. They give children in rural areas and forgotten enclaves a taste of what knowledge is as they pick teaching jobs in dilapidated schools and serve as nurses and doctors in rundown, ill-equipped and understaffed medical centres and hospitals. They pool resources to provide basic amenities for the poor and hapless dwellers of the criminally misgoverned communities they find them.
However, in recent times, there has been some rethinking by some members of the public regarding the scheme, hence spurring debates about the necessity and continuation of this long-standing nationhood consolidator. Those for the retention of the scheme and those calling for its scrapping have put forward some valid and reasonable arguments.
Those who are agitating for the abolition of the scheme have cited the changing socio-economic realities of the country, stressing that the initiative has outlived its usefulness and that the time has come to inject fresh ideas and agenda tailor-made our current socio-economic demands and national development into the school. The perennial insecurity and the safety of corps members have also intensified calls for the scrapping of the scheme.
The proponents of retaining the initiative, on the other hand,, argued that abolishing it would not bode well for the nation. According to them, scrapping the scheme would deal a fatal blow to rural communities and deprive them of any semblance of civilisation and modernity.
Lekan was recently mobilised in the 2025 Batch A (Stream 1) to participate in the National Youth Service Corps scheme (NYSC) after graduating in late 2024.
For him, being a prospective corps member fills him with joy and dread in equal measures.
“I have been posted to a state in the Middle Belt region, and I look forward to resuming at the orientation camp,” he said in a voice tinged with concern.
“However, I do not know what to expect with current security challenges everywhere in the country; I hope that my posting will be in the city, not a remote village.”
Iyabo, on the other hand, served a few years ago; she was posted to a state in the South-South from Lagos.
“NYSC was like I wasted one year of my life; I was already an entrepreneur since my undergraduate years.
“Leaving my budding business for one year to go and serve and return to unemployment did not work for me.
“If graduates were offered the option of not serving but being awarded their certificates after camp, people like me would have taken that option,” she said.
Michael and Iyabo represent a deluge of Nigerians clamouring for the NYSC programme to be reviewed.
A parent, Mr Nnamdi Arinze, said that the NYSC had outlived its purpose in 2011.
“The post-election violence in some states that led to the death of about a dozen members of the NYSC brought to the fore the need to review the scheme.
“I had to think hard and long about it when my son was mobilised the following year; eventually, I decided that his participation would depend on where he was posted,” he said.
A public affairs analyst and social commentator, Jude Jide, opined that the actions of politicians and high-ranking public officeholders run counter to what the scheme is designed to achieve.
“The NYSC was principally established to engender unity among the various ethnic nationalities that make up Nigeria because participants serve in states and regions other than theirs.
“This is meant to foster understanding, growth and tolerance of different cultures across the nation, most especially to educate them on the customs and traditional practices in communities where they serve.
“Can we genuinely say that we have been able to achieve the objectives?
“When governors begin to evacuate their indigenes from other states, has it not cast a doubt in the minds of Nigerians on the continued validity of the scheme?” the analyst queried.
Miss Sarah Adejobi, a youth empowerment advocate, did not support the outright scrapping of the scheme; she instead called for repositioning and shifting its focus from post-war national integration to entrepreneurship for national development.
“Corps members are some of the greatest pool of human resources available in the most remote parts of the country; if we do a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis, that is a big strength.
“Therefore, I have been advocating a system whereby they are divided into engineering corps, agricultural corps, medical corps, and educational corps.’’ She said in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)
According to her, the engineering corps would be designed to help in road construction, maintenance and other engineering works in rural areas.
Adejobi added that the agricultural corps would be designed in line with national food security strategies, with corps members teaching modern farming techniques to rural farmers.
“The medical corps should comprise doctor-corps members and other medical practitioners motivated to provide medical care to rural dwellers.
“Likewise, the education corps will provide qualified, willing and motivated teachers in the rural areas.
“This is the best way to utilise the corps members and maintain continuity while providing them with job opportunities,” she said.
In his remark, Samson John (not his real name) who is currently serving in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, echoed the sentiment of Adejobi.
“I don’t think NYSC should be scrapped but rather be reformed, in the sense that all the core values the service has should be retained and the reforms should be additional allowance given to Corps members, more time should be added to the orientation camp, instead of 21 days it should be a month, where corners of different backgrounds can interact and bound more.
“The NYSC has been a source of unity in a sense, but lately, it has been losing its elements of uniformity. Scrapping NYSC at this crucial moment in the country where there are a lot of factions and separatist movements, it is best to use all things at the government’s disposal to make the unity and bond between different ethnicities, languages and religions in the country, NYSC is one of the elements that is needed not scrapped,” he opined.
Whichever side of the aisle you’re on this topical issue, this is an ongoing debate which will continue to divide opinion.
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