By Promise Eze
Calls for the scrapping of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) have been labelled “unnecessary” by the Director, South West Area Office of the NYSC, Amusan Oluwole Julius. He advised Nigerians not to be “unnecessarily emotional” about the scheme and reminded them that in its 50 years of existence, the NYSC has achieved a lot.
During a Unity Walk organised to mark the 50th anniversary of the scheme in Osun, Amusan, who stood in for the NYSC Director General, Brigadier General Yushau Dogara Ahmed, said that while there may have been issues in the past, the challenges the scheme is facing are not enough to call for its scrapping.
“NYSC has done this nation a lot of good. The NYSC is felt in all the 774 local governments in Nigeria,” he said.
“Calling for the scrapping is not the best thing anybody can talk of now. You will agree that NYSC has made giant strides in the last 50 years.”
Amusan pointed out that the NYSC has made a significant impact in areas such as education, healthcare delivery, social service campaigns, and national programmes. He also noted that the scheme has met the expectations of its founding fathers in fostering national unity.
“When you are talking of fostering national unity, through this scheme, inter-ethnic marriages have occurred, we have seen mobility of labour, corpers being retained in their states of service, many corpers have established their own businesses in the various states where they are posted,” he said.
Amusan acknowledged that the NYSC faces challenges, but he noted that these are the same challenges faced by any other organisation. He stressed that the NYSC has made a lot of progress in the last 50 years and should not be scrapped.
The call for the scrapping of the NYSC has been a subject of debate in Nigeria for some time now, with some arguing that the scheme has outlived its usefulness.
