15th May, 2011
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has disagreed with suggestions that the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme should be scrapped.
The former Vice President, however, said that the programme instituted in 1973 is more than due for a review to reenergise it towards the attainment of its set objectives of national cohesion, integration, unity and stability.
Atiku gave the advice on Sunday in Yola against the backdrop of the 3rd Commencement ceremony of the American University of Nigeria (AUN) and the release of 400 prospective corps members expected to join their colleagues from all parts of the country for the next call up by the NYSC for the compulsory scheme.
The former Vice President flayed calls in some quarters to abolish the programme, maintaining that despite the unfortunate and regrettable death of ten corps members in the recent post-election violence, the benefits of the unification programme are by far greater than its perceived shortcomings.
He said that since the introduction of the NYSC programme in 1973, the scheme has enabled the nation’s young men and women to appreciate the ethnic and cultural diversity of the country, thereby significantly helping them re-think their prejudices and promoting their understanding.
While noting that prejudice imprisons and constricts the mind, Atiku said with the NYSC programme, many graduates of tertiary institutions have remarkably managed to perceive their country more broad-mindedly.
The former Vice President said that no country that went through a civil war should take unity for granted by dismantling the gains of the NYSC, which among others include forging unity even in diversity, under the heat of passion.
“No right-thinking person should recommend the abolition of the programme because of the misguided actions of political thugs who are ruled by emotion rather than reason. You don’t decapitate yourself to cure a headache,†Atiku said.
The former Vice President criticized the legal action being instituted by some persons, seeking to scrap the NYSC programme, noting that no nation should formulate or reverse its policies out of sentiments.
Atiku explained that the youths are the building blocks of unity and that the NYSC has contributed greatly to achieving the objectives of unity, togetherness, harmony, tolerance and peaceful coexistence.
While calling on the government to fish out the perpetrators of the violence against the slain youth corps members, the former Vice President advised advocates for the repeal of the law establishing the NYSC programme not to reduce their minds to the level of those who criminally targeted the murdered young graduates who were on patriotic national assignment.
He praised the Federal Government for the compensation of affected families even as he pointed out that no amount can pay for the loss of such promising young men cut down in their prime.
He said that only justice, as demanded by the affected families can ameliorate the loss and stem the growing culture of impunity in the country.
He specifically cited the recent spate of bombings in the country, and for which, regrettably, no arrests have yet been made. He then called on security agencies to rise to the occasion by apprehending terrorists in the country and having them charged to the courts of law.
Finally Atiku appealed to Nigerians to support the actions of President Goodluck Jonathan so far taken at healing the wounds inflicted on the nation by these killings, which pain was also aggravated by the poor management of the incident by the local administration in the affected areas.