There's something we call National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in my country, it's a one year program, whereby a graduate of a particular tertiary institution like university or polytechnic have the opportunity to serve their fatherland. With this initiative or program, these graduates are usually being posted to different parts of the country, there's actually a way the people in charge do the posting of a thing. You first of all camp for three weeks if the duration hasn't changed and afterwards they will be posted to different organizations, some get posted to a school, some companies both private and government owned and all kinds of registered or notable organizations.
During my own time I was posted to Niger state, I can't forget the joy on my face and in my heart then, It was as if I got a visa lottery lols, going to service was a very precious thing to me then, not until I finished service lol. I camped in paiko camp and after our three weeks training, I was posted together with some other corp members to Revenue house, Niger State internal revenue service, it was another learning process for me entirely, I get to learn how the tax system works, infact my boss then trained us for some weeks and then we did test.
After the training and test we started going out to carry out our duties, I was opportuned to visit alot of places along with my bosses, we went to banks, companies both private and government owned, tertiary institutions and so on, the work made me know some places I would have never thought of visiting throughout my stay in Niger state.
I really learnt a whole lot during my service and I can't forget to also mention that the staff there were so accommodating, they showed us love and didn't make us miss our family too much. Infact if I had the opportunity, I would have love to be retained as a permanent worker but there was no space as at that time, so we all went back to our respective states after service.
There's a lot of benefit in this whole thing, because you get to meet alot of people from different parts of the country, from the Eastern, Western, Southern and Northern part of the country. I can't forget the memories with my friends then, I had friends from all the parts of the country, Yoruba, Hausa and Igbo. It's five years now and we're still in contact, I even chatted with one of them today, my Igbo friend that was teaching me programming then hahaha, he's now a banker.
National Youth Service Corps is a good initiative but the insecurity in the country is making people avoid been posted to some part of the country or being scared of going for it, because we do hear a lot of things happening to corp members, someone was talking about a corp member that was being kidnapped not quite long, and when her family contacted the NYSC, they said they can't do anything about it. It's very bad in my opinion, because I think the government should be able to protect its citizens especially one that's serving his or her fatherland as a corp member.
In my opinion, I don't think the program should be scrapped, but the government should try their best to provide utmost security for corp members, and then the board and the government in general should also improve on the skill acquisition part of the program, because as a Nigerian, we all know what's going on in the country now, there's little or no job out there, so the government should help corp members in learning a skill adequately and then help them financially after their service year to purchase machines or instrument that will useful for them in their various line of work, this will help fix the unemployment issue. The Nigeria of today, one source of income is not enough, you need to double it, you can even triple it if you're privileged.
God bless Nigeria.
