NYSC tragedy: My Take

Letter to Mr. President
The National Youth Service Tragedy and the 2011 elections
Sir,

I am Folarin Samson, a citizen of Nigeria and a fresh graduate waiting to be called for the mandatory one year youth service. I have great dreams and aspirations that I am daily working towards and one of it is to be the president of this great nation, just like you Sir. But I am afraid, and this was what informed my decision to write this letter in the hope it will be published and you’ll get to see and read it. My decision to communicate with you through this medium is anchored on my faith in your leadership and your ability to listen.

Sir, the recurrent spate of violence in the North and the consequent murder of some of my colleagues is what has driven me to write. I guess I have the solution to the crisis.

Your Excellency will agree with me that it will go down in history that the youth of this nation contributed their quota in giving Nigeria a free, fair and credible election. It will also be recorded that many of them were haunted and some slaughtered for being too bold to disrupt the old order. Reports had it that 50 youth corps members were forcibly locked up in a building in Yola and the house set ablaze. 11 others were slaughtered in their prime and scores of the ladies were ravished by hoodlums and unfortunately a randy monarch joined the ignominious fray. When the press reported these sad incidents, Nigerians predictably lashed out and called for the heads of these unpatriotic elements in our midst. The cause of their wrath is evident in the moving stories of the casualties of the April 16 presidential election.

Seun Adewunmi was the only graduate in his family and he had promised to take care of his aged mother, a retired cleaner of Judicial Service Commission, Lagos State. He was butchered to death by rioters. His labour and struggle to survive and be a respectable Nigerian was wasted by a blood-thirsty mob in Bauchi. Ukeoma Ikechukwu’s story is more touching. He had proudly written on his facebook page after he heroically fought election fraud in his duty-post, ‘These CPC supporters would have killed me yesterday, no see threat ooo. Even after forcing under-age voters on me, they wanted me to give them the remaining ballot papers to thumb print. Thank God for the police and I’m happy I could stand for God and my nation. To all corps members who stood despite these threats especially in the North, bravo! Nigeria our change has come’ he had said on his facebook wall few hours to his death. About 249 youths have formed a group to demand justice for his murder. Kehinde Adeniyi was said to have been identified by one of his pupils in the school he taught and subsequently hacked to death. Obinna Okpokiri left UK for Nigeria to serve his fatherland. He had perfected plans to have his post-graduate studies in a British school before he walked into the chilly hands of death in Bauchi. He was beaten to death and burnt. Anslem Sylvester Nkwazema, few days to his death, had become friends with Ukeoma Ikechukwu on facebook. He had written on his page ‘if you cant thank God for what you received, thank God for what you escaped. I may pray 2 fly like an angel, but don’t know what tomorrow may turn out to be’ He was one of the corps members chased into a police station before being sent back into the bloody hands of the rioters because a stone reportedly hit the DPO’s head. And out he went with others, into the waiting hands of these cannibals. The horror, trepidation and strange thoughts that raced through their minds in this deciding moment of their existence as they scamper into machete cuts and eventual death can only be imagined. And I see these killers basking in the euphoria of an ecstatic sphinx.

Sir, these incidents are not new. Over the years many of our promising corps members have died under reprehensible circumstances. The ladies have not been spared either, as they are subjected to inhuman treatment and sexual harassment. Scores of female corps members have been raped in Bauchi, Yola, Niger. In 2008, the media reported that militants ravished 28 female corps members in Abonnema, Rivers state after invading their residence and rounding up the ladies on primary assignment in the area. But the truth is that these are the snippets that filter out to the media. I can confidently say that for every reported case of rape, 10 must have gone undisclosed for fear of stigmatization and defamation. I could have gone to serve in one of these states too. But my school had a delay in the submission of our names. I had criticized the authority and questioned the competence of the administrative staff. After I heard the gruesome murder of these youths, I was sober. If my school had out of desperation succeeded in smuggling our names for service in February, it could have been any of us, I thought. For how long will this continue? How do we stop this bloodbath?

I have listened and read the reactions of parents and intending corps members who were shocked by the development. While some have called for secession, others have opined that the best solution is to scrap NYSC because it has outlived its usefulness. After all, it was created in the wake of Nigeria’s survival of the 1967 civil war for the reconstruction, reconciliation and rehabilitation of the country. Few others said that Nigerian youths can still serve in the geo-political zone of their states instead of risking their lives among strangers. The answers to the question I posted on my facebook wall also straddled between scrapping and geo-political zone service.

Sir, I have put myself in your shoe (although it’s too big for me). Certainly the first option is not good enough. If Yakubu Gowon could fight for Nigeria’s unity, you will not want the country to disintegrate in your era. That will be a bad name for you though it may be a welcome development in some quarters. The second option also comes with its burden of breeding disaffection, fostering primordial sentiments on national issues and bringing about disconnection among the over 250 ethnic groups in the country. The last option is just a recasting of the former. It defeats the essence of NYSC which is to make Nigerian youths mix with people of other tribes, social and family backgrounds for cross-fertilization of culture and ideas.

But here is my thought. Nigeria has a big problem which underlines this entire avoidable carnage. Just last year in Jos, over 500 were reportedly slaughtered; indigenes and non-indigenes fell victims. It was the same in Bauchi, Maiduguri, Borno, et al where hundreds of poor Nigerians fell to the brutality of their countrymen. The slain corps members were just victims of our carnivorous system. Insecurity looms large at us. The booms of bombs and bullets that marred this election in which many lives were lost merely exposed the age long cracks in our security and intelligence gathering system. The callous DPO who left those helpless corps members at the mercy of their assailants might have wondered why he should die for them. He must have been overpowered and in a bid to save himself felt he had to sacrifice these youths who had ran to him for protection. However, he cannot be totally absolved of culpability since it was his duty to protect them even at the expense of his own life. But if he had died who would mourn him? Who would celebrate him? Who would pay his children’s school fees when he’s gone? A demeaning hush envelops the rest of the story. There is therefore the urgent need to salvage our security system. The armed forces will need to have proper education on their roles to safeguard the lives of citizens. Actually what we need is not a strong and coercive leader as many erroneously believe, what we need are strong institutions.

Sir, I recommend that these fallen ones be accorded national burial and their families impressively compensated. They died in the course of their service to the nation. They were valiant heroes who gave their lives for the resurrection of true democracy that was murdered in 2007 under the poor midwifery of Iwu. Besides sir, it is now a refrain that Nigeria’s judicial system has been compromised. Many have also dismissed you as too soft to confront the multifaceted problems of the country. Sir, you must rise to the occasion. Justice must prevail regardless of whose ox is gored. Isn’t it rather shameful and disgraceful that a whole chief justice of the federation was murdered in his own house and eight years after, we are still clueless? Sir, nobody is greater than the law. These recent killings should not be swept under the carpet in the name of political expediency. If the prosecution is dragging, you could invite the help of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which mediated in a similar event in Kenya, making six politicians, ex-head of police, a radio DJ and government ministers to face the full wrath of the law for inciting violence in the Kenyan 2007 election.

Honestly, I think the survivors of this struggle deserve to be appreciated and rewarded. They can be absorbed into the system. These are the set of people we need to upset the status quo in the country. It will be very unfair if the federal government allows these change agents to fizzle out and join the teeming number of unemployed youths roaming the streets and waiting to be tools in the hands of opportunistic sadists in the society.

Finally, an adage says you cannot cure a splitting headache by chopping off the head. NYSC is good intentioned. Those who are instruments of violence in the north are either illiterate or religiously deluded and perverted. In fact, the North has the highest number of poorly educated youths. The Almajiris still pose a great challenge to us as a nation. The NYSC members have however been helpful in educating many of the students in the North and if this is intensified, there could be a re-orientation and a possible paradigm shift in the future. These Northerners also come to the major city and if nothing is done to rescue the situation; they could rise in arms against us while even in our midst. It has happened before in Lagos and some other parts of the country. I do not therefore subscribe to the idea of completely scrapping the scheme. The National Assembly may however sit to possibly review it just as Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekeremadu and some other respectable stalwarts have suggested. As a mitigation measure I want to propose that those parts of the country that are flashpoints should be placed under close surveillance. In fact, the Northern states that have given enough signs of hostility to visitors can be served their own students to forestall killings of strangers in the event of any crisis.

I wish you a fruitful time in office sir. May you give us uninterrupted power supply as you have promised and may God give you skilled and experienced Josephs who will cooperate with you to make Nigeria regain its place in the comity of nations. Long live the Federal Republic of Nigeria; long live our democracy; long live the youths; long live your Excellency.

From Folarin Samson
Just graduated from Mass communication Dept,
University of Lagos, Akoka.
childofdkingdom@yahoo.com
08030572852