| NYSC quota crisis
By Sun News Publishing
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
The recent decision of the Director General of the National
Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Brigadier General Yussuf Bomoi,
to issue quotas to tertiary institutions on the number of
their fresh graduates that should be sent for the compulsory
NYSC scheme is a strange and unacceptable development.
Bomoi, in a recent communication to universities and polytechnics,
cited financial constraints resulting from the Federal Government’s
budgetary provisions to the NYSC, for the decision to limit
the number of graduates to participate in the scheme. Bomoi
said only 120,000 graduates would be eligible to participate
in the NYSC scheme for the 2007/2008 service year, out of
which 75,816 corps members have already been mobilized for
Batch A.
Under the new arrangement, universities have had the number
of their graduates that can go for NYSC significantly pegged.
The University of Ibadan in Oyo state, which has 1,500 fresh
graduates has been given 621 places, Covenant University,
in Otta, Ogun State, has 39 places for its 1,168 graduates
while the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago Iwoye, which
has 2,272 prospective corps members, has been told that the
NYSC can only accommodate 499 of its graduates. Ahmadu Bello
University has been given 1,600 places for about 4850 2006
and 2007 graduates.
Expectedly, this development has been generating ripples and
even protests among prospective corps members in some universities.
Many of the universities and polytechnics that have received
the NYSC directive insist that there is no criteria by which
they would select some graduates to be mobilized for the NYSC,
while keeping others to wait for subsequent batches. Some
universities have called for a suspension or outright cancellation
of the NYSC scheme if the government cannot effectively fund
it.
We see the decision of the NYSC authorities to restrict mobilization
of graduates for the compulsory one-year national service,
for financial considerations, as an attempt to solve a problem
with the creation of a more serious one. The proposition is
unhelpful and a product of a lack of rigorous thinking on
the part of the NYSC authorities.
To put it plainly, the NYSC position is odd and inexpedient.
There can be no acceptable criteria by which a fraction of
a graduating class can be selected by the school authorities
for mobilization while others are told to wait till next year,
when the Senates of their institutions have adjudged them
all as qualified for the national service.
The NYSC should therefore withdraw its contentious mobilization
quota directive and address the root of its problem which
is the underfunding of the scheme. This problem, which is
a fallout of the failure of the Federal Government to match
the growing number of university and polytechnic students
with appropriate budgetary provisions, should be resolved
by the federal authorities, through adequate funding of the
scheme.
The NYSC scheme was established in 1973 with the objective
of fostering national unity and cultural integration among
the various ethnic groupings in Nigeria through posting of
fresh graduates to offer national service in parts of the
country other than their areas of origin. Although the scheme
has lost much of its lustre and fallen short of many of the
laudable reasons for its creation over the years largely because
of underfunding and arbitrary manipulation of the system,
the one-year national service has continued to provide a soft
landing for fresh graduates in the country’s overcrowded
employment market.
It has helped fresh graduates to gain some experience and
put them on a better footing to enter the job market. The
continued existence of this scheme for the development of
our youths is desirable. But it should be adequately funded,
strengthened and restructured to achieve its statutory objective
of national integration and adequately equip corps members
for post-graduation challenges in the area of employment and
self-employment. Its funding should either be prioritized,
or some ingenuous ways found to sponsor it.
The federal government should either adequately fund the NYSC
scheme so that all qualified graduates can proceed for their
national service as and when due, or scrap it. We reject any
attempt to turn the mandatory service, which is a pre-requisite
for employment in Nigeria, into another privilege to be arbitrarily
dispensed to favour some graduates over others.
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