The Federal House of Representatives is considering the scrapping of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), forty-eight years after its establishment by the General Yakubu Gowon military regime.
The House is set to schedule for second reading, the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Alteration Bill, 2020. The Bill is seeking to repeal the NYSC Act, the enabling law for the scheme.
Representative Awaji-Inombek Abiante, the sponsor of the bill, highlighted reasons for considering the discontinuation of the scheme in an explanatory memorandum for the proposal.
The memorandum read in part, “This bill seeks to repeal Section 315(5)(a) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, (as amended) on the following grounds:
“Incessant killing of innocent corps members in some parts of the country due to banditry, religious extremism and ethnic violence; incessant kidnapping of innocent corps members across the country;
“Public and private agencies/departments are no longer recruiting able and qualified Nigerian youths, thus relying heavily on the availability of corps members who are not being well remunerated and get discarded with impunity at the end of their service year without any hope of being gainfully employed;
“Due to insecurity across the country, the National Youth Service Corps management now gives considerations to posting corps members to their geopolitical zone, thus defeating one of the objectives of setting up the service corps, i.e. developing common ties among the Nigerian youths and promote national unity and integration.”
Established by Decree no. 24 of 1973, the NYSC was designed in the aftermath of the Nigerian civil war to promote the 3R principles (Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation) of the military junta.
Though it achieved its goal for national integration in its earlier stages, the scheme has faced increasing challenges ranging from insecurity to shrinking funding in the last decades.
Many have clamoured for the NYSC to be scrapped, arguing that it has outlived its usefulness.
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