A Scheme and its Incredible Rebirth
Before, the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, scheme was only known for the annual ritual of gathering young graduates together for the compulsory national service. But recent efforts by the director-general of the scheme have not only re-energised the
Babatunde, a prospective corps member, thought his life had taken a turn for the worst when he had an accident early November on his way to the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, orientation camp in Yenagoa. He had a bone fracture and since he had not been registered at the camp, he was not yet a responsibility of the Scheme in terms of his treatment. But his thinking along that line showed he was not aware of that which has changed as far as the NYSC was concerned. It has become an organisation given a strong human face beyond the annual ritual of gathering young Nigerians together to serve their fatherland.
And the enduring relevance of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, was underscored recently when a lecturer at the Alvan Ikoku College of Education, Owerri, celebrated his 16th wedding anniversary recently and did not mince words in expressing the ‘role’ played by the NYSC in being a Yoruba man married to an Igbo lady. According to him, he had been posted to Imo State in 1988 for his national youth service at the age of 21. Going by how life treated him during his service year, he decided to stay in Owerri, got a job at College where he served and ten years after he stepped his feet on the soil of Imo State, he was tying the nuptial knits with a daughter of the soil. Today, they are blessed with six kids after 16 years of marriage.
Stories like this abound about how the NYSC has helped national cohesion and inter-tribal marriage. However, like every human institution, the NYSC had come under criticism in recent times from those who felt the Scheme had outlived his usefulness and relevance. Some reckoned that the dreams of the founding fathers of the Scheme have been defeated. Hence, calls for its abolition.
However, if recent developments in the Scheme are anything to go by, then those calling for undertakers for the Scheme might have been a little bit in a hurry. The appointment of the current Director-General of the Scheme, Brigadier-General Johnson Olawumi, had come to be arguably the best thing to have happened to the Scheme 43 years after its establishment. Not only had the Ekiti Stateborn soldier repositioned the NYSC, he has also succeeded in re-ordering and re-modeling the mandate of the Scheme to underscore its social and political relevance in a nation looking to downplay its fault lines.
When Brigadier-Olawumi was appointed, he set about reforming and re-energising the Scheme and ensuring its continued relevance into the society. As a result of this, he announced a four-point agenda aimed at ensuring the NYSC rediscovered itself. The four-point agenda included improvement on the service content of the Scheme; enhancing and ensuring the safety and welfare of corps members as well as staffers of the Scheme; expanding the partnerships for greater impact, improved funding and support and finally, increasing the visibility and the relevance of the Scheme.
If activities of the NYSC in 2014 were anything to go by, it is obvious that General Olawumi has been living up its words. He has put in place some ideas to e ensure that the Scheme remains relevance. And nowhere has this been demonstrated than the Health Initiative for Rural Dwellers, NIRD, launched a couple of months back in Igbo Owu, a rural community in Kwara State. It was an idea whereby health care delivery was being taken directly to people in the interior who need it most. While corps members, medical doctors amongst them, are being posted to health institutions for their primary assignments, they are also being mobilised to these communities once in a month to attend to health needs of the people. During the launch of the pilot scheme, they went in form of mobile clinic, with drugs and other materials. Medical history of the villagers was taken and files opened for them to be able to monitor their progress. Those who needed referrals were duly given. General Olawumi, who explained that the idea would be replicated in all states of the federation, had this to say about the idea.
“This initiative will be replicated in all the states of the Federation and is designed to mobilise Volunteer Corps members for the provision of healthcare intervention services to the rural dwellers thereby facilitating access to prompt health services and improve the general wellbeing of rural dwellers throughout the nooks and crannies of the country.”
Another area the Scheme responded to changing trends was the digitalisation of its operations to enhance effective service deliver. Earlier in the year, the NYSC announced that there was the option of collecting call-up letters online. The Scheme reckoned that a lot of valuable time was being wasted by prospective corps members who had to go to their former schools to go and pick their call-up letters to go to camp for orientation programme. Apart from this, quite a number of lives have been lost to road accidents as a result of prospective corps members travelling long distances to pick call-up letters before travelling another equally long distances to report to camp. Illustration was given of a prospective corps member who finished from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Enugu State, but was posted to Kano for his national service. Meanwhile, he might have traveled down to Lagos after his or her exams. The NYSC reckoned there should be no need to travel back to Nsukka again to pick call-up letter. It introduced a scratch card that prospective corps members could buy to download their call-up letters online, register and also do biometrics. By the time they report to camp, they are just allocated their uniforms and bed space. With this idea, a lot of man hours of NYSC staffers who use to attend to corps members in camp during registration were saved. In the same vein, the idea of spending up to three days to complete registration formalities was also eliminated. While there was resentment in some quarters because of the token being charged to buy the scratch card, not a few corps members expressed satisfaction and pleasure at the new idea. Some of them said the amount being charged for the scratch card was nothing compared to the time, risk and cost the digitilisation of registration process has saved them.
The idea of making the NYSC relevant to the yearning and aspirations of the society has always been paramount in the mind of the director-general. And that was why when Nigerians were clinking celebration glasses and back-slapping that they had defeated Ebola, the NYSC did not do that. Rather, it organised a workshop for its members to prepare against a possible ‘return’ of the deadly virus. This was in October this year. It was a train-the-trainers conference for medical doctor corps members. It was meant to boost efforts against the resurgence of the dreaded Ebola Virus Disease, EVD. The essence of this exercise might be lost on the cursory observer. But anyone who understands the dynamics of the Nigerian society and the demographic distribution of its population will know that the NYSC remains the only governmental exercise that brings the ‘crème-de-la-crème’ of the nation’s young people together. These are young men and women who are under the age of 30. They are strong. They are virile. They are energetic. While the national service is just for about a year, the fact remains that corps members are only kept together in one place under a regimented lifestyle for just three weeks. After this, they are posted to places of their primary assignments where they, to some extent, have to take responsibility for their own safety and well-being. A top official of the Scheme who did not want his name in print told THISDAY that though service was for one year, corps members were only kept together for only three weeks of orientation period.
“We only keep them together for only three weeks,” the official explained. “After that, they are posted to places of primary assignment. Some of them we might not even see again until during the passing out parade. Therefore, we really do not have control over the movement, conduct and who they relate with even if there is mechanism in place to punish deviant behaviour. That is why the seminar on Ebola became very important and relevant.”
One of the things that has helped reposition the NYSC is the leadership style of the director-general. He has succeeded in bringing a human face to an organisation that is known for its regimented methods. General Olawumi did not see the job of superintending over the NYSC as another military assignment that must be carried out with military traditional way of handling things. He saw it as an opportunity to show the world that either in military or mufti, human beings share common humanity. He demonstrated this in many ways in the short time he has spent as the NYSC boss.
It was while he was in Benin as part of his tour of NYSC orientation camps for 2014 Batch C, which opened on 4th November, that the director-general learnt of Babatunde, earlier mentioned, who was involved in an auto accident alongside five other corps members on their way to NYSC orientation camp. While those who were with Babatunde did not sustain much injury, the young man was not that lucky. He had to undergo surgery for fractured bone. When he learnt of the situation, the director-general had to go to the University of Benin Teaching Hospital where he was receiving treatment. The military officer had this to say:
“I decided to come here personally to wish him quick recovery, to show that the country places a lot of value on the security and the lives of these young people and to show that we appreciate the enormous sacrifice and contributions they are making for and to the country. The least we can do is to continue to ensure their safety at all times. And we will continue to do that in different ways, including enhanced security in the orientation camps, in the NYSC lodges and their places of primary assignments, during special assignments such as the conduct of elections, and through prompt response to those in distress using the instrumentality of our upgraded distress call centre.”
It did not end with those words. The NYSC boss directed prompt payment of Babatunde’s hospital bills and promised to grant his redeployment request to allow for his full recuperation after surgery. He also personally gave financial support to the mother of the accident victim who had come all the way from Ibadan to attend to his son.
Babatunde too showed appreciation and was moved by the gesture of the NYSC boss. His mother had this to say: “After the accident, I thought I was on my own here at the hospital until the NYDC DG suddenly walked in and paid all the bills.”
Apart from this gesture, Brigadier-General Olawumi did not rely on reports of his state directors to know what was going on in various camps across the country. He made sure he visited as many camps as possible during the three-week orientation period. He said he was doing so to ensure that he was able to have an on-the-spot assessment of goings-on in the camp.
Babatunde might still be recuperating from his accident, but the fact that he was not abandoned by an organisation that would have hitherto said he was not its responsibility is a reflection of the changed in the NYSC.