End NYSC Already

South Africa eventually severed its coarse link between national service and civilian life through a constitutional amendment in 1996. Nigeria, however, still maintains a softer, but no less punitive, drafting system. Through the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), a national programme set up in 1973 following the dark struggles of the Nigerian civil war, many Nigerian graduates have to travel to far-flung locations to engage for a year in paramilitary training and ‘community development service’ as a conciliatory post-war effort towards nation building. The objective of the programme is to promote national unity and integration, and the system has been described by former President Muhammadu Buhari as one of Nigeria’s

A perceptive observer will be negligent in failing to decipher the true intent of the NYSC programme, contrary to the former president’s assertion. At the heart of the scheme is governmental paranoia from the blood and gore of the Nigerian civil war being expressed through a pedestrian initiative designed to entrench otherwise inspired young Nigerians with the repugnant ideology of servitude. The programme’s anthem calls Nigeria’s youths to serve the country ‘under the sun or in the rain’, as diametrically opposed to a national call to arms where Nigerian youths see their country as one to fully love, embrace and eventually lead.

National governments often declare pacifist goals of instilling in youths a sense of responsibility and patriotism as the official objective of youth draft programmes like NYSC. However, involvement in these programmes only ends up traumatizing many participants. Under South Africa’s conscription system, a growing number of young white men who were worn out by the war-mongering tendencies of the apartheid government sought to avoid conscription by attempting suicide, fleeing the country, hiding within the country, or becoming conscientious objectors. A total of 260 white, male South African conscripts attempted suicide in 1986 while in the SADF camps; more than 2,000 young white professional men also left the country during the year. A 1987 survey conducted of all male students at South Africa’s Rhodes University found that 55 per cent were contemplating emigrating from the country due to national conscription.

For Nigerian youths, the deathly effects of national conscription in the form of a youth service programme are no less dissimilar. Political rioters attacked and killed more than seven youth corps members in Bauchi State, following dissatisfaction with the result of the 17 April presidential election of 2011 (even after the victims sought refuge in a police station). Additionally, more than 40 corps members in Nigeria have died in avoidable mishaps since 2019 while travelling across Nigeria’s tiresome roads on the back of mandatory federal call-ups. Eight prospective corps members were kidnapped in August 2023 after which they spent more than 100 days in captivity. Conversely, endemic corruption has risen as the graduates meant to uphold national ethical tenets now pay bribes to totally avoid the programme or to get a posting to safer states amidst Nigeria’s growing insecurity challenges. Some prospective corps members present fake certificates and medical documents in order to get mobilized to favourable places for primary assignments while some others simply induce NYSC officials with cash and gift items so they can return home and show up only for monthly clearances. In a 2021 interview with Al Jazeera, Kelechi, an ardent Nigerian graduate who joined the NYSC because of the potential for better employment prospects, confessed that the programme has only left him with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Conscription is an old practice and has taken many forms around the world, the most common being a ‘universal service’ requirement, where a set of the population is expected to serve a stint in the armed forces or in a national corps. Some countries that currently maintain national service programs include Israel, Eritrea, Morocco, and North Korea.

In the 1900s, conscription through mandatory military service was popular because it helped to form the basis of a powerful military while purportedly promoting active citizenship and stronger social ties across socioeconomic divides. However, national commentators have argued that extended national service programmes during periods of truce violate human rights and liberalism on multiple fronts by subjecting youths to outdated notions of national serfdom through military drills and community development activities that are not paramount. It is for this reason that the popularity of national service programmes has been on a steady decline. Six out of 10 participants in a 2023 YouGov survey in the UK opposed compulsory, military and yearly national service; 21 of the 27 European Union nations have also abolished conscription as of writing. In 2019, a federal court in the United States ruled that the country’s male-only draft system was unconstitutional, a judgement that underscores the human rights deficiencies often implicit in the setup of national draft systems.