The Director of the Abuja School of Social Thought and Politics, Sam Amadi, has declared that the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has failed to achieve its core objectives, arguing that the scheme is no longer suited to Nigeria’s current realities.
Amadi made the remarks on Friday while appearing on Arise Television’s Morning Show, where he questioned the effectiveness of the decades-old program and called for a comprehensive review of its structure and purpose.
According to him, one of the major challenges facing the scheme is the growing tendency among influential Nigerians to influence where their children are posted, a practice he said undermines the original goal of promoting national integration.
“Most elites now self-select. I can’t tell everybody who calls me from my village that my son is going for NYSC, I want him in Abuja, Lagos. Everybody self-selects, so that defeats the fundamental framework of the scheme,” he said.
Amadi also raised concerns about the welfare and safety of corps members, arguing that the institutions responsible for overseeing the program often lack the resources needed to adequately protect participants.
“The ministry that oversees it doesn’t have the resources to provide protocol that protects, as we have seen stories of young people die, so that also creates resentment as corps members are not happy. Maybe they indulge in it because there is no job,” he stated.
“I think that we need to tell ourselves the truth that this scheme has failed fundamentally. It worked in the past but Nigeria’s problem is no longer about knowing how people in Kebbi behave.
“We have got enough of those samplings, symbolisms. It’s not a question of statecraft,” he said.
Amadi further argued that graduates should not be posted to states facing security challenges, insisting that national service should prioritise the safety and interests of participants.
“We have this tendency of sharing everything in common. The NYSC is not a representative position. If Imo State is unsafe to deploy people, don’t deploy people because there is nothing that the state loses that year.
“It’s not like we are sharing the national cake. Kano has got, Lagos has got, why did Imo not get?” he said.
Regulatory Commission (NERC) maintained that the program may have been effective in the past but no longer addresses the country’s most pressing challenges.
According to him, the program should be redesigned to focus on strategic national development goals rather than maintaining a blanket approach that requires all graduates to participate.
“It should be about the students themselves, about the nation solving strategic national development. The point is that this scheme, there is nothing honourable about it,” he stated.
Amadi also suggested reducing the number of participants in the program nothing that the volume of graduates entering the labour market today is significantly higher than when the NYSC was established.
“It was designed when we had a small population of graduates but today we are producing too many. Polytechnics are there, schools of nursing are there,” he said.
He proposed that participation could become more selective, allowing only a portion of graduates to take part based on national priorities and available resources.
“I agree that it should be suspended in some places and focused on national needs. Maybe it should consider not taking everybody who graduates so that students compete for this national honour, so they get value and a badge,” Amadi added.
The comments come amid ongoing debates about the future of the NYSC, with growing calls from various stakeholders for reforms to address concerns over security, funding, relevance and the overall effectiveness of the scheme in modern-day Nigeria.
Established in 1973 to promote national unity and integration after the Nigerian Civil War, the NYSC remains one of the country’s most recognisable youth programmes. However, Amadi’s remarks are likely to add fresh momentum to discussions about whether the scheme should be restructured, scaled back or replaced altogether.
