Let’s begin with a few questions that I think we should all be asking about the federal government’s decision to comprehensively reform the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). Should the existing NYSC scheme be fundamentally overhauled? How should we understand the government’s proposed reform? And what is the proper purpose of a national service scheme in today’s Nigeria? My answer to the first question is a direct “yes.”
The NYSC is a child of conflict created by the military in its own image. And after 53 years, there can be no argument that it is no longer fit for purpose in its current form. Military leadership and personnel, command structures, and a military culture of drills, parades and martial discipline are not the stuff of 26 years of uninterrupted democracy. Nor are these necessarily the best mechanisms for advancing national service or unity. So, yes, the NYSC should be run as a civil institution, rather than a quasi-military outfit that it has never truly been but only mimicked. And no, it should not be led by people whose primary job is to fight wars.
Moreover, the sort of root-and-branch approach to institutional reform being considered for NYSC is precisely the kind that Nigeria needs across all our public institutions. As I have written several times in these pages, all too often our reform policies tend to be either tokenistic or cosmetic, even where a complete overhaul is required. Poverty reduction? Give wheelbarrows to a handful of people here, or set up barbershops for others there. Is it policing or prison services reform? Change the name or the uniforms, and you are done. But this approach has only left us where we are now as a country. Therefore, if we get a root-and-branch reform of the NYSC right, we will have a successful model of public-sector reform to transfer elsewhere, and the government itself would have achieved an enduring legacy.
