NYSC: SERVICE MISSION OR SUICIDE MISSION

Prior to the 2011 election, I had written an article titled ‘Serving their fatherland’, through subsequent events that graced the year many people concluded that I was more than a journalist and like the days of our lord Jesus Christ they said I must be one of the prophets although that was not the case but that is a case for another day. So, as I was saying, through the article, I had condemn the move of General Tsigha, the then director of NYSC for choosing to send 400,000 corp members on such suicide mission under the pretense of electoral services to their fatherland. They refused; they employed all the available tricks in a fireman bag of arm including an empty promise of tight security, free and fair election. So, like a dog fated to get lost who will not yield the hunters whistle, INEC along with NYSC embarked on their collaboration, while corpers were the victim.

The general election, which promised to be the most apprehensive event turned out to be a cause for joy until the results of the presidential elections were announced. This was because the announcement of the presidential election was greeted with public disturbance and violence in some states in the North. The violence involved the killing of some members of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), who were on election duty. This however did not prevent both local and foreign observers from declaring the elections as largely free and fair. A lot of encomiums were showered on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and its leadership. For the corp members who became fallen heroes, someone even said it was their destiny to die, although he came back to amend his speech but what difference does it make.

Now, another defining feature of 2011 is the intense terrorist bombings by the Boko Haram group. The first recorded of such attack by the group was in 2004 at Kannama, another major attack was on 26 July, 2009, when it launched a mass uprising with an attack on a police station in Bauchi State, starting a five-day uprising that spread to Maiduguri and elsewhere. The group however, became more daring and adopted more sophisticated weapons and tactics, including suicide bombings. The group bombed the headquarters of The Nigeria Police in Abuja on 16 June, 2011, the United Nations Building in Abuja on 26 August, 2011, and Saint Theresa’s Catholic Church at Madalla on Christmas Day. Over 25 attacks for which the group claimed responsibility were recorded in 2011. More recently the peaceful commercial city of Kano was besieged by the deadly group killing hundreds of innocent soul and still counting.

To this end, on 25^th January, National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members also storm the Headquarters office in Abuja for redeployment. They were the Batch “B” 2011 members that were posted to Kano and some other northern states insisting on redeployment to other region. More importantly, they urged the NYSC management to stop further posting to Adamawa, Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi and Niger, in particular. The management of the NYSC urged the corps members seeking redeployment to return to their states of origin after filling the redeployment form. The Special Adviser to the NYSC Director-General, Alhaji Musa Abubakar said: “The NYSC does not have any right to deprive any corps member of his or her right.

Well said by the NYSC director, the NYSC does not have right to deny any citizen their rights to life including my humble self, I suddenly remember that I am also a prospective corp member and that my life is also at stake if I’m posted to the Northern part of Nigeria. What the NYSC administrator and the federal government must understand are many.

First, the corp members are a vulnerable set of people, they can be easily recognized and they are assumed to be government children, for people who are angry with the government, killing corpers is a way of dealing with the government. Again, the safety of the corp members is not just about avoiding crises labeled states of the north, it is about the northern states of Nigeria militating against non-northern citizen, in my opinion therefore, corp members should not be allowed to go to any northern state for now-whether peaceful like the old Kano or violent like Maiduguri, otherwise, this noble service mission may again turn into a suicide mission.