Corps members now posted to only where they are secure – NYSC D-G

Brig-Gen. Nnamdi Okore-Affia is indeed an army officer who says it the way he sees it. When he spoke with journalists in Abuja on Thursday, he was blunt on the contentious issue of posting corps members to volatile areas where several of them were killed by insurgents last year. According to him, female corps members now receive marshal arts training and members will no longer be posted to areas where their lives could be threatened. Excerpts:
After 38 years, what is the relevance of the NYSC to Nigeria?

Thirty-eight years is long enough to pursue the agenda of unity. I joined the service 31 years ago and when I was appointed as the DG of NYSC, I discovered that the NYSC was still running the same programmes that were in place when I was a corps member and I asked why we have not been sticking to the goal of fostering unity.

There was the need for a paradigm shift to reposition the NYSC to attain modern day realities. One area that we view as very important is the posting of corps members. People think that corps members should be posted to every available place where they need the services of cheap and subsidized labour, but this is not correct.

If NYSC was established to foster national unity, then corps members should be able to render service to the nation first, before service to self and private organisations or individuals.


*Corps members

What is the current posting policy of the scheme?

We have taken a critical look at corps members serving, for instance in places like banks and private organisations, and we ask ‘where does national service come into this if they are sent to banks’?. Therefore, I said it is necessary to bring back the actual concept of national service into the NYSC to build on the concept of national unity.

If corps members are posted to the rural communities to render services in education, primary healthcare centres, among others, these communities will not only benefit from the core manpower, but they will begin to appreciate the need for national unity.

It is not just the corps members who will be preaching national unity, but also the host communities that will receive young men and women from various other communities to render services in their domains. Through this, they will agree that national unity is something that is a worthwhile venture.

Then, we came up with a Positive policy design to address top key areas like education, primary healthcare delivery, agriculture and infrastructure development. Our belief is that if corps members are deployed to these four key areas, they will be able to render services directed and focused on national development with the attendant effects on the population.

Through this process, of course, the host communities will be better for this, because we have been to communities where education and healthcare delivery programmes survive purely on the corps members.

It is rather unfortunate that some of these communities are regarded in Nigeria of today as volatile and insecure. But the truth is that a lot of these communities depend solely on the corps members to run their education and primary healthcare delivery programmes.

One other thing we are trying to address is the issue of unemployment. Because of the high numbers of corps members, we have three batches for the service year, that is , Batch ‘A’, Batch ‘B’ and Batch ‘C’. A lot of organizations are eagerly waiting for these corps members to come on board as replacement for the outgoing ones.

A lot of organisations did not bother to go to the labour market to employ Nigerians, and we think that if we deprive them of this cheap subsidised labour, they will be compelled to meet their manpower needs by employing Nigerians.

This is one important area we want to address under the new administration. We have commenced the implementation with the Batch ‘A’ of 2012 and so far, even with the expected opposition and resistance, we are making progress.

Another area we felt is due for review is the concept of orientation course programmes. These have been affected by manual activities and a few lectures on the culture, tradition and history of the host communities. We thought that corps members needed something extra, because government jobs are no longer there for the people to come and choose.

Therefore, we felt it is necessary to introduce a skills acquisition programme for the corps members to equip them and thereafter have something to build on at the end of their service year. We all know that the labour market is already saturated and the jobs are not there.

We are skilled in the areas of animal husbandry, fish and grasscutter farming, snailery, beekeeping. All these are very good businesses with available markets, especially if you are very good in raising snails and grasscutters. Though these may have nothing to do with what the corps members read in their various schools, surely they are alternative means of livelihood.

The safety of corps members has become a big issue, especially in some parts of the country. How are you managing the posting to such areas?

We have introduced some elements of martial arts training in our orientation programme, targeted primarily at our female corps members. Prior to my coming on board, we had issues of female corps members being molested by okada riders, some by the traditional rulers.

The thinking is that if these young ladies have some forms of self- defence training, they would be able to say no in more ways than one. The main aim is to give these young ladies a fighting chance so that they would be able to defend themselves before the deed is done. They will probably not be helpless victims, but able to fight for themselves rather than crying for help.

At the just-concluded orientation for Batch ‘A’ 2012, I was actually amazed at the positive response to martial art training for the female corps members. It was interesting to see some level of enthusiasm witnessed and we are building on it.

Like I always tell my corps members, sometimes it is better to possess a skill and really not need it than to desperately need it and not have it. We have also taken some steps in addressing security concerns of corps members, parents and guardians, especially with the level of insecurity in some parts of the country, and building on the sad event of March or April, 2011.

Also, we set up a distress call centre at the national headquarters in Abuja here. The way it is configured to work is that every corps member who is mobilized is required to provide a functional GSM number registered to him or her. When that corps member completes orientation and is deployed for primary assignment, the place of that assignment is captured and details of security agencies in that locality are all captured.

If any corps member calls the centre with the registered number, every detail of that person will be displayed on the screen for its operator to relay back to any security agency within the area of primary assignment of the corps member making the distress call for prompt rescue operation.

The aim of this is primarily to reduce as much as possible the reaction time between when a corps member or groups are in some forms of distress and when they get help. We are assuring the general public that as long as they are with their registered GSM number within the service areas, corps members can reach the call centre and tell us what is amiss if any. So far, we have not received call for any help under distress other than call for financial help.

Also in addressing the se-curity concerns, we have intensified and increased our collaborations with the security agencies. As it is known, the National Youth Service Corps is not a security agency and that is why we need collaboration with those that are empowered to provide physical security, since we care about the security of our corps members. We have reached out to the Nigeria Police, State Security Service, SSS and the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, NSCDC, and they have been very responsive.

At the last orientation, we had increased deployment of manpower from these organisations and of course, also from the Nigerian Army, all which provided security for the corps members. Thereafter, when they were deployed for their primary assignments, we have also compiled addresses of all existing lodges where the corps members usually reside while serving and given the same to security agencies within those areas for them to know the direction of the corps members in time of need for help whenever the need arises.

Let us understand one thing, Nigeria has 36 states plus one federal capital territory; by our mandate, we must post corps members to every state of the federation good or bad. However, because some areas have been described as volatile for one reason or the other, we have reduced the number of corps members posted to those states such that at the end of orientation, they are deployable within the state capitals and maybe one or two local government areas where they can be easily reached by the state coordinator, the Commissioner of Police or state director of SSS so that you don’t have them in far-flung areas where help will not get to them but the truth is that each state is deserving of whatever number of corps members that should be sent to them. Like I said earlier, there are 36 states and the FCT that make up the Federal Republic of Nigeria. We will not deliberately send people to violence-prone areas but at least to state capitals.

Would you say that the skills acquisition programme of the NYSC is actually making any difference in job creation in the country, given the large number of graduates churned out of our tertiary institutions yearly?

We are building on our skills acquisition programme. We also have what we call War Against Poverty Initiative. This was derived from the Millennium Development Goals, MDGs which centre on the eradication of poverty. Corps members who partake in our skills acquisition training, and who at the end of their service year, are desirous of establishing their businesses, are given interest-free loans to start such businesses.

The main requirement is to have a workable memorandum of understanding, MoU with a guarantor and the only collateral required is the certificate of national service, which will be released to the corps member at the end of completion of the loan facility.

So far, about 2, 000 to 3, 000 corps members have accessed the facility. The loan ranges from N150, 000 to N250, 000 per individual for small scale enterprises.

That these loans are being repaid by the first set of beneficiaries is an indication that their businesses are thriving. It is not only the corps members that are building successful businesses, but also the labour market is beginning to find answers to the large scale unemployment in the country, because for every business that succeeds, one or two members of the communities where the business is located will also gain employment from the corps members.

It is our hope that for every 10 corps members, if nine succeed and each employs five local hands, it will go a long way in addressing the issue of youth unemployment in the country

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