On May 22, 1973, the military government of Yakubu Gowon instituted the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) by Decree No. 22. This took place in the context of the unrest and fragmentation that led up to and was exacerbated by the civil war after which reconciliation and reconstruction were supposedly taking place. The NYSC was created as a vehicle to aid in that reconciliation process, targeting young people, with the ideal outcome being the creation of ties amongst Nigerians such that national unity would be promoted. To do this, the NYSC posts the graduates of tertiary institutions to a state other than that of their state of origin where they are expected to remain for the one-year duration of the programme. During this time, corps members or “corpers” are posted to places of primary assignment (PPAs) and they participate in various avenues of community development under the Community Development Scheme (CDS) of the programme. All of this constitutes their one-year, mandatory service to the nation.

While incredibly idealistic in its outlook, like any Nigerian ventures, the NYSC is not without its issues. In fact, the case can be made that the scheme is riddled with more problems than its total utility to the nation. For many people, the NYSC is just the next thing to tick off the list, a chore to be carried out. After more than five decades of the scheme, there is very little to show in terms of national unity and/or social development in the nation. Today, the NYSC perhaps stands as an example of some sunk cost fallacy, a scheme that probably has no place in its current state in the modern-day nation of Nigeria and there are a few reasons why.

One of the things the NYSC hopes to do is to inculcate patriotism into those who join its ranks. However, everyone with functioning observational skills can see that the nation gives particularly young people reasons to not be so patriotic or at least ambivalent with respect to the topic of loving one’s country. So, what does the NYSC do to remedy this? A North Korea-esque campaign of hammering patriotism into the minds of those who become corps members. At the orientation camps which can perhaps be referred to as benign versions of “re-education camps”, the NYSC ceaselessly spews what can only be described as pro-patriotic propaganda, an attempt at the indoctrination of corps members which requires them to disregard the observation of their eyes and ears and to eschew good judgement and to profess love for the nation above all else.

This is so pervasive in the scheme that it affects the things corps members are allowed to publicly say, with camp officials repeatedly emphasising that corpers must only speak of Nigeria in a good light, never to criticise the nation, never to criticise public officers. In many ways, this messaging and its dictates mirrors the plight of a helpless wife in an abusive marriage who is not allowed to freely speak of her husband’s abuse of her. Contravening the NYSC’s “rules” in the matter of what can and cannot be said, carry steep penalties for the individuals involved. Some of the justifications given as to why corps members must only speak good includes the notion that “even developed countries have slums and they only show us the good parts”, as though most of Nigeria isn’t an eyesore to any person who has had the opportunity to see and/or experience better. The policy of muzzling and/or directing the speech of corps members is rich coming from a scheme that regularly sends young people into literal wildernesses that are barely touched by government benevolence and expecting those individuals to have overwhelmingly positive things to say about the country and its government.

The most recent, widely known example of the NYSC’s speech smothering tactics was the case of Raye, a Lagos state corps member who protested the cost-of-living crisis in Nigeria online and was met with the immediate fury of NYSC authorities. The NYSC constantly admonishes corps members to “not use social media”, or to only “use social media in a way that speaks positively about Nigeria”. No fair criticisms by corps members are tolerated – a corper isn’t even allowed to simply openly acknowledge a bad situation such as the terribly cramped and often inhumane conditions in the orientation camps that one would really only see in refugee camps.

During the first phase of the service year, the orientation program, corpers are mandated to participate in the Skills Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development program where of different, often informal skills are taught, all within a 2-week window at best. These skills include tailoring, beadmaking, catering, graphics design and so many more. Needless to say, for a person who has never been trained in any one of those skills, 2 weeks is an inadequately short period of time to gain any sort of proficiency that can allow for commercial success. Furthermore, introducing a program like SAED at the NYSC level, illustrates further the depths to which the Nigerian establishment has failed to invest in the future of its youth. How is this the case?

Well, in secondary schools in Nigeria, it is mandated that all students take a trade subject, the rationale being that it would begin the process of cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset in young people and give them something to fall back on should they be unable to proceed to tertiary institutions or to get formal employment. All fair and good in its intentions. However, upon proceeding to tertiary education, entrepreneurship is taught as a course in much of the curriculum in universities. In some cases, students would encounter entrepreneurship as a course more than once during their university education. The rationale again, is to give students the skills to start businesses after their education should they be unable to obtain formal employment. After having done a trade subject in secondary school, taken entrepreneurship courses at least once in tertiary institutions, young Nigerians proceed to the NYSC and there, SAED is waiting to be forced down their throats.

Over the course of the orientation program, NYSC officials make it a point to remind corps members that their degrees and/or diplomas are essentially worthless and that they must take up a skill or two to rescue themselves from economic ruin. Statements like “Bachelors na water”, or “Having a certificate does not guarantee a job” are incredibly common, belittling the years spent struggling through Nigeria’s often dysfunctional education system, telling people that most of that struggle was likely for naught. While there is no issue with acknowledging the dire state of Nigeria’s labour market per se, the continuous parroting of this pro-entrepreneurial propaganda by the NYSC and other levels of Nigeria’s ruling establishment is a tacit admission of the country’s failure to secure the future of its youth and a surreptitious reminder to young people that they are on their own.

Central to the NYSC scheme is the primary assignment, the organisation wherein the corps member will be employed for most of the service year. The NYSC says that they try their best to match places of primary assignment to the disciplines of individual corps members but the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. There are a variety of reasons why including the fact that there just aren’t enough opportunities available to absorb the numbers of people coming out of tertiary institutions every year on the basis of discipline alone. Furthermore, a lot of important facets of Nigerian society are, odd as it may sound, lacking in manpower, chief amongst which is education, especially in the suburbs and in rural areas. These factors make it so that the vast majority of corps members are posted by the NYSC to carry out their primary assignments as teachers in schools across the country.

It also should be noted the ethics of such postings are questionable. The vast majority of graduates did not train to be teachers and the NYSC offers no such training to corps members – how could it? Thus, employing thousands of people to be teachers despite no formal training in that regard is a quite suspect, perhaps dangerous practice. Furthermore, it seems to imply that the position of the NYSC as to the teaching profession is that it is one that requires almost no training and hence is a low skill occupation – just about anyone can do it. This couldn’t be further from the truth, of course, the teaching profession is one that demands a lot of attention and professionalism but the NYSC, the education sector and school owners are perfectly fine with having untrained individuals carry out the job of dispensing education.

The issue with the NYSC and the labour of the people under its employ doesn’t just end at questionable postings, it also can be looked at as a state sanctioned exploitative scheme. Thousands of young people, sent to states where they aren’t resident for one year, while being paid a monthly allowance that’s barely $50 today and only mandating employers of corps members to provide accommodation or an allowance in lieu as well as transportation without requiring them to pay actual salaries for the roles the corps members occupy within those organisations. Even the requirements of employers to provide accommodation or an allowance in lieu is often not adhered to and when it is, the allowances are barely able to cover the purpose for which they are given. But the NYSC is mandatory for all graduates of universities and polytechnics and so, there’s not a lot of ways to wriggle out of it even with the knowledge of these absurd conditions. In other words, the NYSC and its partner organizations are able to extract labour without fair compensation on a nationwide scale which essentially constitutes exploitation.

The goal to encourage intercultural ties and integration amongst Nigeria’s youth is the foremost focus of the NYSC. It has been over 5 decades of the scheme and one cannot necessarily point to its successes on a societal level. It can even be said that many of the suspicions and animosity many Nigerian ethnic groups have towards each other have only deepened in all this time. One can say that Nigeria is not any more integrated and/or united today than it was at the founding of the scheme and that the only thing preventing a large-scale conflict on the level of the Civil War is the inability of aggrieved or agitating groups to organise effectively. Perhaps the percentage of Nigerians who participate in the NYSC is far too little for the effect of integration from the scheme to have any real perceptible effect on the general situation of Nigerian cohesion.

The nation needs to have serious conversations on the scheme and its place in the current day. Perhaps, the NYSC can be reformed, as it should be rather than an outright scrapping. But it is important to evaluate its rather imperceptible successes, if any at all and scrutinize its glaring issues. This is Nigeria, however. Not much is certain to change regardless.

In his book, ‘From Opposition to Governing Party: Nigeria’s APC Merger Story’, Dr Ogbonnaya Onu (now of blessed memory) discussed the delicate negotiations that eventually culminated in the registration of the APC. Each of the merging parties and groups came with their own proposals, especially regarding the party’s acronym. “Each emerging partner wanted the new name to be as close as possible to its old name. In accepting the new name, each merging partner became satisfied only when it contributed at least one word. In accepting the name, All Progressives Congress (APC), the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) was satisfied that it contributed ‘Congress’. The All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) was happy that it contributed ‘All’. Even though ‘All’ had only three letters, it was the leading word in the new name. The Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) felt satisfied that it contributed ‘Progressives’. Also, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) was satisfied that it contributed ‘All Progressives,’” wrote Onu. “The acronym, APC, became acceptable because all merging partners saw a bit of themselves in it. Most of them contributed two of the letters. None contributed more…”

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The foregoing, excerpted from my 2017 book, ‘Against The Run of Play: How an Incumbent President was Defeated in Nigeria’, tells a compelling story about political parties in Nigeria. If the discussions that succeeded in unseating an incumbent president in 2015 were not about issues but rather the party’s acronym, should anybody be surprised about the current situation in the country? The more unfortunate thing is that almost every day, our politicians reinforce the fact that party platforms mean nothing to them. With that, we have ended up with a multiplicity of political parties that are mere aggregations of strange bedfellows, simply for the purpose of securing power. 

On Monday, while defecting from the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) under which platform he won the 2023 general election to the ruling APC, Governor Sheriff Oborevwori anchored his decision on the ‘love’ President Bola Tinubu “has shown to us in Delta State”. Aside from the presidential ‘love’ that required reciprocity ahead of 2027, the governor also alluded to the presence of fellow governors at the ceremony to justify his decision. “This is a movement, this is not a defection; we (governors) have agreed we will move together and when we move together, what is at the national we will be able to grab it.”

Nigerian politicians are very good when it comes to ‘grabbing’ all sorts of things! Incidentally, in grabbing the APC platform which he now leads in the state by virtue of the party’s convention, Oborevwori has pushed aside former Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege who was the APC flagbearer in the last election. Nobody would be surprised if Omo-Agege also defects to the PDP where he began his political journey and ‘grab’ the party’s ticket in 2027. There is a precedent to that. Godwin Obaseki won the September 2016 gubernatorial election in Edo State on the platform of the APC. He defeated Osagie Ize-Iyamu, then the PDP candidate. Four years later, in 2020, after he was edged out of the APC, Obaseki pushed Ize-Iyamu aside to grab the PDP ticket. Within a matter of days, Ize-Iyamu also grabbed the APC gubernatorial ticket!

Meanwhile, with its power of patronage, APC is only copying what the PDP did in the past. Some of us can remember that in 1999, the PDP won the presidency, 241 of the 360 seats in the House of Representatives, 71 of the 109 senatorial seats, and its members were elected governors in 21 of the 36 states. Four years later, with politicians from other parties trooping in for their slices of the federal pie, PDP won the governorship elections in 28 of the 36 states and 76 senatorial seats. Now the tide has turned. From 11 governors two years ago, PDP has been shrinking. After Delta State, Akwa Ibom may soon follow with Governor Umo Eno speaking in parables about deboarding from ‘a faulty aircraft’ to enter ‘a different plane’ in the coming days. There are reports of others also plotting the same move.

Ordinarily, procedures as to how people should obtain power and how they can be replaced is what distinguishes democracy from other forms of government. Political parties are central to this, with their principal role of aggregating ideas on how to solve the problems of society. But in Nigeria, political parties essentially represent the personal interests of powerful individuals with the primary motivation to ‘grab’ power. Invariably, what should serve as platforms for constructive engagement on how to meet the aspirations of the people have become mere vehicles for trading positions between and among politicians and their cronies/family members.

Even in smaller African countries, political parties are more than mere platforms for winning elections. But in a milieu in which public service has been reduced to ‘eating’, as I wrote last December after Ghana’s presidential election which revealed the strength of their political parties, a Nigerian politician could be a PDP member in the morning, decamp to the LP or SDP in the afternoon and by evening, be attending the APC meeting as the board of trustees’ chairman. “Rarely in Ghana do you see people moving from one party to another with every general election,” the Independent National Electoral (INEC) Chairman, Mahmood Yakubu said while wading in on this same issue last year. “There are people who have supported political parties for many years. So, whether the party is in power or opposition, they stick to the political party.”

For all the noise about recent defections, this has been the pattern of our politics in recent years. As former Delta State Governor and PDP presidential running mate in the 2023 general election, Ifeanyi Okowa reminded former Senate President Bukola Saraki on Tuesday, no Nigerian politician can cast a stone when it comes to jumping from one party to another. Okowa is right. There is hardly any politician in the country today who has been in the same political party since 1999. When it comes to political parties, they have all adopted a nomadic disposition, jumping from one to another based on cold calculations about which would be the easier route to power. That perhaps explains why the primaries to secure the tickets of these parties are no more than bazaars for the highest bidders. But for our democracy to survive and thrive, things must change.

To wean the country of this transactional ethos in politics, we need to have a conversation about the minimal expectation of governance, and the values that should drive public office. And that cannot be done without reforming the political parties.

 Osinachi, Homicide and Matters Arising

The three-year trial in the death of popular gospel singer, Osinachi Nwachukwu, was concluded on Monday with the conviction of her husband, Peter Nwachukwu. While sentencing him to death by hanging, Justice Njideka Nwosu-Iheme of the FCT High Court relied on oral testimonies of 17 witnesses during the trial (among whom were two children of the couple) as well as documentary evidence.

In the homicide charge against Nwachukwu, he was accused of forcefully ejecting the late Osinachi from their home, contrary to the Violence Against Persons, VAP (Prohibition) Act, 2015. He was also accused of pushing the late Osinachi out of a moving vehicle, restraining her movement and locking her up in the house while denying her access to her money for medication and household necessities. He reportedly forced her into begging and borrowing to survive. Nwachukwu was also accused of subjecting his deceased wife to emotional, verbal and psychological abuse, even as he prevented her mother and siblings from visiting their home. Nwachukwu was further charged for cruelly beating his children (two of whom testified against him in court), recording their cry and playing it on his phone. While all this was going on, Nwachukwu was said to have threatened the children from reporting acts of violence against their mother to Dr Paul Enenche, the Senior Pastor of Dunamis International Gospel Centre (where he and late wife worshipped) or any other person.

This is a tragedy that might have been averted. From what transpired after Osinachi’s death on 8th April 2022, many were aware of the violence to which she was subjected by her husband. But apparently because of the patriarchal nature of our society, she had to endure the abuse until she paid the supreme price. With many people putting the blame on churches where forgiveness and reconciliation are often recommended in cases of domestic abuse, Enenche publicly exonerated himself. The General Overseer of the Omega Fire Ministries International, Apostle Johnson Suleman, also waded in by prescribing a novel solution to such challenge. “All those women that their husbands are beating, don’t they have brothers? If they don’t have biological brothers, they have Christian brothers,” Apostle Suleman told his congregation at the time. “If you are in this church and you are beating your wife, stop it. If she reports you to me, we will beat you. I will go to the police station and take permission before I gather brothers in this church to beat you.”     

Following Nwachukwu’s conviction and sentence, some commentators have expressed concerns about the issue of death penalty in Nigeria. But they miss the critical issue – the growing number of lives that have been lost to domestic violence. It is something we must take more seriously. Four years ago, following the reconciliation between a battered wife and her journalist husband at the instance of then Benue State Governor, Sam Ortom, I made my position clear on this issue. The woman had posted her battered and bruised face on social media (X and WhatsApp) before Ortom and members of the Benue State Executive Council intervened to ‘reconcile’ the couple after which a public statement was released. While I had no problem with the reconciliation, I nonetheless raised several pertinent issues in that column, https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2020/12/17/re-ortom-and-the-wife-beater/ which interested readers can access.

The fear of being ostracized and the general lack of sympathy for divorced women have contributed immensely to the growth of domestic violence in Nigerian homes, I wrote in the column which underscored many of the things our mothers endured. Unfortunately, the prevalent culture of stigmatization and cajoling the wife to return to the batterer, without addressing the deep-seated issues that continue to disrupt family life so violently, has only resulted in tragedies like that of the late Osinachi.

We cannot continue to perpetuate the notion that women should assume a preponderance of responsibility for making their marriage work. This absolves husbands of their concomitant duty of love, support and care. In the Osinachi case, the tragedy is compounded by the traumatic experience of the children who saw their mother being violently abused by their father and the role they have now played in bringing him to justice.

For no fault of theirs, the lives of those children have been turned upside down. If care is not taken, they could end up being further victimised by a society where the line between right and wrong has been completely blurred. I hope they have the needed support at this most difficult period in their lives.

If this headline looks strange to you, I borrowed it from my friend and colleague, PUNCH columnist, Lekan Shote. See Lekan’s “This article has no title” of 19 March, 2025! There are occasions one struggles to headline a piece but the right choice of words keeps eluding one. So why not borrow a leaf from Lekan by simply saying, “This article has no title”! Or I can add my own angle, like I have done here, by asking the reader to affix whatever title he deems appropriate!

Published here today is Idowu Ephraim Faleye’s article titled “When your seat becomes the target of your competitors, your performance doesn’t inspire - it infuriates!”. Reading it, I laughed and laughed but it also gave me food for thought. How true! I have experienced it again and again. And only those who don’t mind throwing the baby away with the bathwater will not agree with the points made by Faleye. Excerpts:

“When the seat you occupy is the target of your competitors, there is nothing you can do to please those who are contending for the seat. It doesn’t matter how hard you try or how sincere your intentions are; they will always find a reason to complain. Your good deeds will be questioned, your motives will be misinterpreted, and your achievements will be viewed through the lens of suspicion. This is the bitter reality of political rivalry where ambition clouds appreciation and success becomes a threat.

"Imagine someone eyeing your job at work. No matter how much you excel, they’re not going to clap for you. Instead, your promotion becomes a source of bitterness. That’s exactly how political opponents behave when they want the seat you are occupying. They don’t see your achievements as progress but as obstacles to their (own) ambition. The more you do, the more uncomfortable they become. The more you deliver, the harder they work to discredit you because every milestone you hit weakens their case against you.

"This isn’t unique to Nigeria. Across the world, when leaders occupy powerful positions, their seats attract envy and ambition. The unfortunate truth is that many people don’t want to build; they (only) want to inherit. They don’t want to contribute to solutions; they want to reap the benefits of being in charge. So instead of supporting the incumbent to succeed, they work tirelessly to ensure he fails. That way, they can say, 'We told you he couldn’t do it.'

"What makes this worse is that some members of the public, driven by hardship or misinformation, join the bandwagon. They forget that governing a nation or state is not a magic show. It requires patience, planning, and consistency. When a leader is making tough decisions that may not look glamorous at the moment, it is easy to misunderstand him if you’re not seeing the full picture. And unfortunately, opposition figures capitalize on this. They spread narratives that fit their ambition, not the truth.

"It is not wrong to aspire for leadership, but ambition must be guided by ethics. Politics should be about service, not sabotage. If your only strategy to win is to ensure the current leader fails, then your motive is not leadership—it is conquest. We cannot build a great nation on the back of envy and destruction. We must rise above partisan hatred and see governance as a collective responsibility.

"As we reflect on our roles as citizens, commentators, and stakeholders, let us remember that politics is not war. It is not a game of who can destroy whom. It is a platform for service. When we understand this, we will start to hold our leaders accountable with dignity, not with hatred. We will begin to see that supporting good policies, no matter who introduces them, is not weakness but wisdom.

"Let us rise as a people who can separate ambition from truth. Let us not be pawns in the hands of those who seek power at all costs. And to the leaders under fire today, remember: even when your seat is the target, do not be distracted. Lead with courage. Lead with conscience. Because in the end, it is not the noise of your opponents that will define you, but the testimony of your impact. And that, history never forgets.”

Do you disagree with anything he has said here? I can tell you the only reason some would agree or even took the pains to read this to the very end is because, to make even the jaundiced to read it, I removed the two examples Faleye cited in his beautiful piece: President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Gov. Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji of Ekiti state, whose performance he considers to be so far, so good! Not that I disagree with his judgment, though! Some in position of leadership make no effort to lead at all. Those seen to be making efforts deserve encouragement, which, I think, is what Faleye strove to do here. Not resting on their oars, Tinubu and Oyebanji should continue to strive to do more because it is not yet "uhuru".

FEEDBACK on “Why was everything about Jesus made so controversial”?

Thanks for this brilliant piece. I really enjoyed it. All the areas touched are certainly very interesting, and I agree with your observations. I spent four years in Israel as a diplomat, 1994-1998. I saw the three Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - at close quarters; and the potential of these Abrahamic faiths as a force for good or evil. The story of the historical and mythical Jesus gives room for a lot of controversy. Even the various locations of his birth, crucifixion, and burial are all shrouded in controversy. In the final analysis, it is always a function of just accepting what you are told by the tour guide, stay at that perceived holy ground, and saying your prayers with the belief that God or Jesus has answered.

You will be shocked when you go into a Jewish Yeshiva and see young people studying the Hebrew Bible and the Torah. They tell you they have never heard of Jesus Christ and Christianity because the Hebrew Bible does not have the Synoptic Gospel (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), which details the account of the life and times of Jesus Christ. So, the book of Isaiah talking about an Emmanuel that is to come is not Jesus Christ. The Saviour that will redeem the captive Israel is yet to come!

When I asked them why they refused to be Christian and accept Christ as the son of God, they asked me to tell them something about Buddhism, Confucianism and Shintoism (the Japanese religion). I said I knew nothing about them. They then said, "Why do you want us to know anything about Christ and Christianity?" They remind you that Christianity got a political push and the Roman Empire took over their land. Later, the Ottoman Empire did the same and then the British took over.

Through all of these periods, Jews have been killed and persecuted by powers for millennia (remember the Crusaders) on account of the accusation that it was the Jews that killed and crucified Jesus. They said that all they want now is that they should be left alone to practice their faith and live their life! And I agree with them to some extent, so long as they remain as the State of Israel composed of Jews, Moslems, Christians etc; not the Jewish State of Israel which is driving the current genocide in Gaza by the State of Israel and the Netanyahu government.

Overall, faith is a personal thing. Each of us had our Epiphany at one time in our history as we grew up old enough to select our path and make our spiritual choices. It is sad what organized religion has become in our country, and that is why I truly agree with Karl Marx that religion is the opium of our people, at least we can say that for our country. We have unfortunately lost the road to salvation with the way our leaders in the Christian and Moslem communities - and even traditional religious leaders - are carrying on! - Ayo Olukanni.

“All that you have is your soul”. This thought hit home when I watched that short film: The pale blue dot! - Ezekiel Odeyemi.

NB: Thank you, Sir, for sharing the film by Carl Sagan (1990). I enjoin everyone to search for the film and give their soul good, quality food.

Thank you for the boldness to raise vital questions about Christianity, unlike the preaching that "faith believes and questions not how". A Revd Vicar once told me my faith was not strong enough because questions I raised portrayed me more as a philosopher than a Christian! Please pray for me, a poor sinner! - Gboyega Amobonye.

Going through this particular piece and reflecting back on others, I can't but imagine how much academics is missing in people like you! Just fancy the depth of your argument, your objectivity, the allusions, the conclusion, in fact, all! I am aware that varsities in the US and perhaps other climes have provision for what is called Professor of Practice whereby people who have made an impressive mark in the professions are co-opted into the academics to impart their skills, knowledge, and experience in students, which perfectly blends the theoretical with the practical. With that in mind, the (relevant departments in our universities) would be so blessed to have your type on board teaching creative writing and other related courses to their students. It is one innovation that I would wish the likes of Prof. Ṣiyan Oyewẹsọ can push through and get the managers of our educational system to adopt. - Abiodun Adefioye.