“Alas for those who do not sing but die with all the music in them” – Holmes.
About four months into the service year, Andrew, a corps member deployed to a secondary school in the Bayelsa hinterland took an assessment from the beginning of the service year and concluded that apart from his primary and secondary school assignments, he was simply stagnant and unproductive. Andrew would not just point accusing fingers at himself and swallow it just like that; no, he had reasons for being redundant for so long. His long list of excuses include the fact that he never liked Bayelsa, he hated the idea of teaching in a school with his hard earned Bachelor of science in Estate Management, he was disgusted by his new environment. As the litany of excuses fill up to the brim, it dawned on Andrew that the time being wasted was neither the villager’s, nor that of the NYSC; it was his own God – given precious and limited time. After listening to the fatherly remarks of the DG NYSC during his visit to the NYSC orientation camp in kaiama, Bayelsa state, the scales fell off Andrew’s eyes like Adam when he ate the forbidden fruit. The DG encouraged corps members to develop members to develop themselves and see the service year as an opportunity to sharpen their personal skills, establish tentacles for entrepreneurship options and embark on self – improvement sprees.
Away from the service year scene, many of us seem to unconsciously adopt the Andrew kind of lifestyle: complaining about all the wrong things and desperately digging up excuses to marshal a strong defense. This approach to life can be likened to the fallowing of an agricultural land. The grasses are allowed to grow to the peak and die out naturally year in, year out. They are in a dormant, inactive and uncreative state usurping valuable time and resources yet coming out with mediocre outputs that are only good as waste materials. When under the same condition and footing, their contemporaries would take the world by storm.
Fallowing youths as I choose to address them, are the ones who have made up their minds to just hide and fizzle out unnoticed; they have deliberately or unconsciously chosen to play the roles of the so called spectators in the theatre of life. They prefer to dodge responsibilities and make themselves viable guinea pigs for the experimentation of the escapist theory. Fallowing followers are blessed beyond bounds with exceptional skills and talents, but alas they are too lazy to even discover this goldmine resident in them, talk less of fanning to flame its embers. They prefer to take the lesser of the two evils, option B, which makes them mere onlookers while other people make things happen. Fallowing followers prefer to float, just lie low and let the tide toss them like weightless, directionless chaff. They forget Francis Bacon’s famous quote that “in this theatre of man’s life, it is reserved only for God and the angels to be lookers on”
But thank God for the NYSC initiative. If and only if Nigerian youths who undergo the scheme can continue to uphold the invaluable gains the NYSC training accords them. From the orientation camp to the passing out parades at the end of service year, the NYSC scheme is so packed with well planned programmes, activities and measures to imbue priceless values and virtues and expunge venomous vices from the veins of Nigerian youths. Little wonder a Nigerian president once described the scheme as one of the only lifelines for Nigeria’s tomorrow.
During the orientation course on camp, corps members are forced to understand that life must not always go as they want it, this lesson learnt by the rudimentary lifestyle which commences immediately after registration; the registration process in itself is one which introduces a dint of order and respect for constituted authorities, it teaches tolerance and patient endurance all at once. The early morning rising and meditation sets the tone for a high spirit filled day.
Corps members are made to wake up as early as 5:30am and get set for meditation within 10 minutes. This goes a long way in establishing the attitude of rising early and preparing for the day’s productivity, an attitude which becomes much more relevant when the youths take up employments or start out on their own personal businesses after the service year. Another important unforgettable feature of the camp is the bugle – an instrument whose tunes, as moderated by the bugler, regulates the timetable on camp. Distinctive sounds are blown while corps members swiftly obey the call. This makes them understand the need to be time conscious and mentally alert at all times.
The lecture sessions, drills, parades rehearsals and social activities on camp also represent an admixture of variety necessary to enhance all round balanced development of the total youth. The posting of corps members to places of primary assignment thereby separating friends and charting new courses of life is in itself a greater lesson.
Oversight functions of the NYSC on the corps members throughout their service year are set to make the corps members constantly alive to their responsibilities. The various impromptu headcounts, clearance procedures and secondary assignments are laudable initiatives which serve as effective stand points to checkmate all acts of truancy, abscondment or indiscipline on the part of the corps members. Even the meager monthly stipend (allawi) given to corps members is a great teacher of financial management; for if one sees such an amount, he/she is prompted to become financially wise and creative enough to either strike a balance between the income and lifestyle, or to invent other legitimate ways of sourcing income to augment the allawi. The hardcore lesson cannot be learnt in school, it is raw practical.
With all these activities, any youth who passes through the NYSC scheme must be wekk grounded physically, mentally, socially and intellectually, thus wounding up as a total being, set to take up leadership roles and produce effective results in challenging capabilities. There is, therefore, no room for redundancy, laziness, lopsidedness or exhibition of lackadaisical tendencies of any sort.
“Give or take, the NYSC scheme has tremendously assisted in restructuring the poise of Nigerian graduates, the scheme must be supported by all Nigerians.”
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