Neusroom Feature: How Nigerian civil war led to the establishment of NYSC

In May 1973, three years after the 30-month civil war that pitched the eastern region against the rest of Nigeria, the military administration of General Yakubu Gowon announced the establishment of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) by Decree No.24 of May 22, 1973, with the aim of uniting a highly fragmented nation.

Before the war, the Igbos had expressed their disappointment in the lopsided appointment in the northern-dominated public service and to register their displeasure, a group of aggrieved soldiers from the East led by Major Kaduna Nzeogwu led the nation’s first military coup in January 1966. The coup ousted and led to the killing of Tafawa Balewa as the Prime Minister and Aguiyi Ironsi became the Head of State while Chukwuemeka Ojukwu became the Governor of the Eastern Region. It soon became widely termed an “Igbo coup”.

Renowned Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe in his last book before his death – ‘There Was a Country’, while opposing the labelling of the brutal coup as a ‘tribal coup’.

He wrote: “Part of the way to respond to confusion in Nigeria is to blame those from the other ethnic group. One found some ethnic or religious element supporting whatever one was trying to make sense of.”

Achebe added: “There seemed to be a lust for revenge which meant an excuse for Nigerians to take out their resentment on the Igbos.”

Six months later, some soldiers led by Murtala Muhammed staged a bloody retaliatory coup to counter the coup that brought Ironsi to power. The casualties were Ironsi and other Igbos in the Army. In the northern states, the Igbo people became victims of what many historians have described as pogroms which led to the death of an estimated 30,000 people.

The pogroms led to a mass exodus of Igbo people back to the East. On May 30, 1967, Ojukwu declared the secession of the region from Nigeria over claims that the Igbos were no longer needed in Nigeria and they could no longer stay where they were not wanted.

In a statement on January 16, 1970, Ojukwu said: “Biafra was born out of the blood of innocents slaughtered in Nigeria during the pogroms of 1966.” The declaration of the Biafran state led to a civil war that lasted for 30 months and led to the death of an estimated three million people.

When the war finally ended in January 1970, as part of the “3R” programme of the government — Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation, aimed at rebuilding and uniting the country, the Gowon—led military government created the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to bridge ethnic and religious divisions in Nigeria and to foster nationalism.

“The reason my government established the NYSC was to initiate reconciliation among Nigerians after the civil war,” Gowon said in 2017 while speaking on the 44th anniversary of the scheme.

“We also sought to establish it for Nigerians to know each other more; promote national unity and encourage the NYSC to offer services to communities around them,” the former head of state added. “We fought to establish it and I am proud of the scheme and all it has achieved and continue to do for the youth and the country.”

The scheme was originally designed to deploy university and polytechnic graduates under the age of 30 (at the time of graduation) to locations outside their region of origin and where they were educated, while graduates above age 30 at the time of their graduation get an exemption letter. 

The corps members are then posted to places of primary assignment relevant to their field of study where they would acquire one year experience while earning stipends popularly called ‘allowee’ from the federal government and in some cases from the state government and their employers.

However, corps members are now being deployed to schools to make up for the shortage of teachers in many public schools across the nation. This has made many lose interest in the scheme. Many now allegedly bribe officials to be deployed to ‘juicy’ government agencies and private organisations.

Section 2 (1) of the NYSC Act mandates all Nigerians who earn degrees or higher national diplomas from Nigerian and foreign tertiary institutions (effective 1972/73 session) to participate in the scheme.

Section 12 of the Act also mandates all employers to demand the national service certificate of prospective employees before hiring, while Section 13 criminalises skipping the scheme as it prescribes 12 months imprisonment or a fine of N2,000 or both, for such offenders.

In 2018, a former Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun was compelled to vacate the office for not participating in the scheme and presenting a fake exemption certificate for her screening when she was appointed Minister.

In the last 20 years, there have been debates and calls for the scrapping of the scheme over claims that it has lost its purpose. Many corps members who view themselves as a source of cheap labour for the government and some private employers also see the scheme as a waste of time.

In July 2000, the League for Human Rights called for the scrapping of the scheme over claims that it had deviated from the objectives for which it was established.

The rising insecurity across the country has also fuelled calls for the scrapping of NYSC. In 2011, 10 corps members who worked as INEC adhoc staff during the 2011 general elections were killed in post-election violence in some northern states. The government paid N5m compensation to their parents. Lives of corps members living in hinterlands that are hotbeds of kidnapping and insecurity are endangered.

Also in the last three years, there have been rising cases of abduction of corps members travelling to their states of assignment by Boko Haram insurgents and other bandits. A corps member Abraham Amuda kidnapped by Boko Haram insurgents in 2019 is yet to regain freedom. Some corps members have also been victims of communal clashes in the communities they were posted to serve. In March 2020, a bus conveying corps members to NYSC camp in Zamfara State was attacked by gunmen while some corps members have also been attacked in different communities across the country.

Meanwhile, Gowon who founded the scheme believes the call for the scrapping of NYSC is misplaced.

“They are saying it should be scrapped. They believe that the NYSC has out-lived its usefulness and is no longer relevant to society. The scheme has done a lot to bring about national unity and integration,” he said in 2017.

Meanwhile, through the scheme, some corps members have secured gainful employment and also met their love partners.

For Oluwasegun Fabiyi and Oluwaferanmi Daramola, who got married in June 2020, the call for scrapping of the scheme may sound absurd to them. The couple met during their orientation course at the NYSC camp in Jigawa State in 2019 and their love story started from there.

50 years after the civil war and 47 years after the establishment of NYSC to promote national unity, the country is still battling terrorism and ethno-religious tensions across different parts of the nation. In all of these tensions, corps members are easily the target of bandits and rioters.