‘Convert NYSC Into An Optional Two-Year Programme’ – Tunde Bakare Tells FG

The Serving Overseer of Citadel Global Community Church, formerly known as Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, has recommended a restructuring of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).

He recommended that NYSC should be converted into an optional two-year programme “with the first year spent on military training for our young people and the second year spent on agro-entrepreneurship.”

Bakare said the review has become all the more necessary with the recent brutalisation of the Nigerian youth by the police force and the military.

He made the recommendation at the State of the Nation Broadcast in Lagos on Sunday October 25, 2020, where he addressed the attack on unarmed EndSARS protesters at the Lekki toll gate on Tuesday October 20, 2020.

The NYSC programme was established in May 1973 by former Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, three years after the Nigerian civil war. The scheme was part of the “3R” programme of the government — Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation,” aimed at rebuilding and uniting the country, to bridge ethnic and religious divisions in Nigeria and to foster nationalism.

Over the years, there have been calls for the scrapping and review of the scheme over claims that it had deviated from the objectives for which it was established.

See Also

Why Influencers Are Consultants And Why They Must Act As Such – Njideka Akabogu

Critics have cited violent attacks on corps members in states they are deployed to as one of the reasons why NYSC should be scrapped or made mandatory.

Bakare has now said the scheme should be made optional because it “provides an opportunity to achieve capacity building for economic development, to beef up our national security and defence infrastructure, as well as build the bridge of trust between the people and the armed forces.”