NYSC Members Who Feel Unsafe Are Free to Ask For Redeployment – Affia, DG

In the face of recent altercation and even accusation that the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is forcing corp members to serve in volatile areas, the Director-General, Brigadier-General N.T. Okorie-Affia recently spoke on what the NYSC is doing to ensure the safety of corps members and other issues relating to the scheme.

Since the 2011 elections, security has been the main issue with NYSC. What else are you doing to ensure safety of corps members? 
As I said before, we believe corps members can only serve their country when they are alive and safe. We are doing a lot to ensure that corps members are safe and that they feel safe from the camps, through their primary assignment to their passing out, and not just in those volatile states but all over the country. We have doubled security personnel at the orientation camps. We have increased number of armed soldiers, mobile policemen, SSS operatives and members of the Civil Defence Corps in the orientation camps across the country.


After orientation, we give the location of the lodges of corps members to the State Police Command, the State Security Service and the civil defence corps so that they would easily know where to go to in case of emergency involving corps members. We are also partnering more intensely with the state governments and they have been very responsive.


We have also set up a distress call centre where corps members in distress can call in to receive help on time. We have started training corps members in self-defence and we also issue security tips to them for them to understand their environment, where not to go, and how to conduct themselves in a security-conscious way.

Q: There is a growing concern that NYSC is more interested in deploying corps members than in ensuring their safety…
A: No. That is not a fair comment. We want corps members to be safe, and we are doing everything possible to ensure their safety. It is only when corps members are alive that they can render service to the country. So, their safety comes first. It is non-negotiable. Even when our mandate is to equitably distribute our manpower in all the states of the Federation, we are not unmindful of the security challenges in some parts of the country. And that is why we have not held orientation exercises in both Borno and Yobe states since November last year because of the peculiar situations in those places.

But there was a recent uproar because of deployment of corps members to these same states…  The uproar could have been occasioned by two things. One factor could be the upsurge of violence in some states around the time people received their call-up letters. And the other could be due to misunderstanding. It is true that the call-up letters of some corps members read Borno and Yobe states.

But it is just to ensure adherence to the law that stipulates equitable distribution of corps manpower. It does not mean that those corps members were heading for Yobe and Borno states.   The orientation for those two states will take place in Nassarrawa and Benue: Borno State will hold its orientation in Benue State and Yobe State will hold its orientation in Nassarrawa State. After the orientation, it is only corps members who insist on going to those states that will be posted there.

That has been clarified. But we also have five additional states where we give corps members the option to redeploy if they feel unsafe. These are Kaduna, Bauchi, Gombe, Plateau and Kano. We also identify some particularly volatile local government areas that we don’t send corps members to for primary assignments.


After the sad events of April 2011, there have been calls for NYSC to be scrapped. Has the scheme not truly outlived its usefulness? 

NYSC is still useful and still relevant. What happened last year is regrettable. Our hearts continue to go to those who lost loved ones. But that tragedy should make us do more to guarantee the security of corps members. The fact that we have security challenges now should not make us overlook the need for national unity and integration. More than ever before, that need is still there. It is also true that NYSC might not have been adapted to the changing times. This calls for reform, not abolition.


We must not be deterred by prevailing circumstances to give up on the dreams and aspirations of our founding fathers. But we are also not unmindful of the peculiar moment we live in and we cannot put any corps member in harm’s way. We will do our best to make corps members secure. But we want to urge Nigerians to believe that if we stand up as one, we can overcome this scourge and reclaim our nation for us all and for posterity.


You Mentioned the NYSC Distress Call Centre. How does that work?
 It is IT-based. When corps members are deployed for primary assignment their full data such as names, state codes, places of primary assignment, and addresses of security agencies within that area are sent by the state coordinators to the headquarters. It is then uploaded into our system. One of the major pieces of information that we request from corps members is their phone numbers so that when the corps member calls with that particular number his or her data page will appear on the screen including the place of primary assignment.

Immediately, we can identify the contact of the security agency within that place and then we relay the distress call to them.  The Distress Call Centre was commissioned by the former Minister of Youth Development in February this year. It has been in operations since then. Corps members have sent us complaints of the general type, but we are yet to receive any real distress call. But the facility is there to ensure that corps members who are in distress anywhere in the country can receive help and on time. All corps members have the number.

It seems corps members are now less loved than before… I won’t say so because we have gone to some communities where primary healthcare delivery and education sectors depend solely on NYSC manpower and these communities are most appreciative of the presence of corps members. Each year we have presidential honours awards ceremony for corps member who have executed projects beneficial to their host communities nationwide.


One of the criteria is that you must serve in a state other than your own for your project to be considered for presentation. This means that corps members are still doing their best to win the hearts and mind of their host communities.


So what is being done to reform the NYSC?
A lot is being done to reposition the scheme to give more value to the participating corps members and to the country at large. We have expanded the scope of our skills acquisition programme. More time in the orientation time-table is now dedicated to skills acquisitions and entrepreneurship development. The aim is to empower corps members to employ themselves and others after their service year.


We also have the war against poverty initiative which is part of the MDG poverty reduction goal and we give interest-free loans to interested corps members to start their own small scale businesses. We want to empower them to be self-reliant and if they start businesses that succeed, those corps members will by extension require extra hands and the multiplier effect will pull more people out from the unemployment market.


To also ensure that corps members serve with dignity and contribute more to the country, we now post them to only four sectors for primary assignment: agriculture, education, health and infrastructure. This posting policy, which we started with Batch A 2012, was designed to bring back the concept of national service into the youth service.

Culled from SUN