The 53-year-old National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is mutating from a para-military scheme into a wholly civilian set up going by the reform announced recently by the Federal Government.
The highly laudable and progressive reform marks the first holistic review of the over five-decade old scheme since inception. The quite seismic reform introduce into the scheme civilian operational leadership, 11 specialized career streams, and a restructured six-week orientation camp.
According to the details announced by the Minister of Youth Development, Ayodele Olanwale, on June 29, 2026, the operational head of the NYSC will change from a military Director-General to a civilian one, while the military will retain its supportive role of protecting the corps members.
The call-up and mobilisation process is now digital and technology-driven, featuring what the authorities called risk-sensitive deployment protocols to improve corps safety. The traditional Passing-Out-Parade is replaced with a formal graduation ceremony, alongside a newly redesigned uniform.
The orientation period expands to six weeks, divided into three two-week blocks focusing on civic values (weeks 1–2), career mapping and financial literacy (weeks 3–4), and stream-specific skills training (weeks 5–6).
Prospective members are to register under one of 11 core tracks: Agric, Medical, Education, Tech and Digital, Legal, Public Service, Infrastructure, Green, Enterprise, Creative Economy and Paramilitary and Security Corps.
The reform aims “to build the present ambition of a $1 trillion economy by repositioning the NYSC as a civilian-led, skill-oriented, productivity-driven and youth-empowering national institution.”
However, as laudable as the reform is, with the prospect of empowering participants into propabable post-service skillful employment generation, the larger and most germane question about the security of the graduate-participants being mobilized to serve their fatherland every year remains opaque.
Their security is continuously imperiled as they turn out for the highly prepatetic programme, crisscrossing every part of this verse country to secluded camps, far away from their geo-political regions, for their orientation. While some are lucky to be posted to cities for their primary assignments after the orientation, majority of them usually travel farther into the hitherlands for the programme.
Posting them away from their states or zones is understandable because the scheme itself was launched in 1973 as one of Gen. Yakubu Gowon-led Federal Military Government’s policies to foster unity and reconciliation designed to heal the wounds of the civil war.
To this end, the scheme mobilizes youths to serve the nation for one year usually outside their ethnic or geo-political backgrounds. These are 30-year-old and below adult-youths of both sexes, who are deliberately galvanized every year to coalesce and interact with others outside their regions every year.
Inter-ethnic marriages are even encouraged among them during the service year to foster integration by blood to further mitigate the ruinous aftermaths of the civil war.
However, with the accretion of the scheme over the years, abuses such as brazen manipulation of corps members’ postings by parents and guardians in connivance with venal NYSC officials have tended to render that objective nugatory.
But in the course of keeping faith with this laudable national integration objective over the years, many corps members keep falling into the hands of rapacious terrorists, who have turned the macabre orgy of kidnapping-for-ransom into a big business. While many are lucky to regain freedom after ransoms are paid and spending harrowing periods in captivity, some are killed outright, thus burrowing deep, emotional gashes into the hearts of victims’ parents.
Documented cases are emotionally searing, as these villaneous elements carry out their sanguinary activities with all venom and ferocity in many parts of the country. The Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) alone documented at least 83 cases of corps members abducted in 10 years, 40 in Rivers State alone.
Some time in December, 2020, gunmen ambushed a bus carrying corps members traveling from the orientation camp in Ede, Osun State. One of the victims, named Suleiman Yusuf Bomoi, a graduate of English Language from the Federal University, Gashua, Borno State, was shot dead by the armed gang during the incident, while the others were abducted.
A corps member, Samson Worlu, was kidnapped in Imo State, where he was serving the fatherland in November, 2015. He was reportedly lured into the kidnappers’ trap. Worlu’s family told an online medium that they lost communication with him after dropping him off at Rumuokoro junction in Rivers State.
Worlu’s kidnappers demanded an initial ransom of N5 million from his family. The corps member was, however, murdered by the soulless abductors, even after his family provided a total sum of N1 million.
On March 9, 2020, gunmen attacked an 18-seater bus conveying 13 corps members along the Funtua-Gusau expressway, Katsina State. Nine of them were, however, immediately rescued from the nearby forest by the Katsina State Police Command following a timely distress call.
The remaining four were immediately whisked away. Their abductors, according to media reports, later demanded for a ransom fee of N10 million. But they were reportedly rescued two days after.
Suspected bandits reportedly kidnapped two prospective corps members deployed to Sokoto and Kebbi States along the Tsafe-Gusau road in Zamfara on October 23, 2021. There were speculations that more corps members were kidnapped in the same attack. The two victims were, however, released about a week later.
Two corps members were abducted by suspected bandits in the Mikang Local Government Area of Plateau State on October 4, 2022. Both of them were abducted at the Government Secondary School, Zomoh. One of them reportedly escaped captivity on October 6. However, there have been no reports about the release of the other corps member.
On December 6, 2022, a female corps member was reportedly abducted on Arab Road, Kubwa, Federal Capital Territory (FCT), alongside seven other people. The armed attackers shot two male victims, killing one in the process.
According to a daily newspaper report, there had been no sign of the kidnapped corps member’s release since then.
At least five corps members were abducted in Emuoha Local Government Area of River State on May 16, 2023. The victims were returning from their orientation camp in Ondo State when they were abducted by armed men on the Rumuji axis of the East-West Road in Emohua.
While the total number of victims was not ascertained, five of the corps members reportedly escaped. The escaped victims reported to the Rumuji Divisional Police Office in River State.
In March, 2026, a corps member, identified as Abba, was kidnapped by terrorists along Funtua-Gusau Expressway in Zamfara State. The abductors reportedly demanded a ₦10 million ransom. The amount was paid but there were fears that he might have been killed after communication ceased following the ransom payment.
However, subsequent conflicting video footage later emerged showing him alive in captivity. According to an online medium, “Family sources revealed that the abductors had initially demanded N10million for his release but later made fresh demands after receiving the money.”
It was not clear if he was eventually released.
The cases of the spasmodic abductions and killings of corps members are a miscellany, too numerous to recount. The rampancy of the kidnap cases and apparent lack of a practical solution to the problem has consistently sparked concerns about the continued relevance of the scheme. The scheme is, indeed, increasingly becoming a deleterious exercise for prospective corps members.
This is the crux of the matter. The reform is glaringly short on the issue of security for the corps members. The closest hint towards addressing this was what the Special Adviser to the President on Policy Coordination, Hadiza Bala Usman, said when she was briefing newsmen after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting, that the reform also reviewed how corps members are posted across states, with greater consideration given to prevailing security challenges in different parts of the country.
The Youth Minister also talked about addressing what he called the “risk-sensitive deployment” protocols towards improving corps members’ safety, as part of the broader reform.
But their comments amount to mere sophistry because they merely acknowledged the problem but there was no allusion to any concrete blueprint in the reform towards addressing the issue. Everything remains inchoate and opaque, as noted earlier.
The authorities will have to unfurl a robust blueprint towards ensuring the safety of corps members henceforth, if the reform is to achieve any meaningful goal. We cannot continue to lead those fresh graduates literally to the ‘slaughter’s slab’ every year in the name of national service.
But before then, let the authorities partly obviate the security challenge by immediately relocating all NYSC orientation camps from the hitherlands to the city centers. This will reduce the rampancy of corps members’ abductions.
Preferably, we believe it will be more auspicious to hold the orientation programme henceforth in tertiary institutions located in the cities for comfort and space. The programme should be held in those institutions during the holidays so it would not disrupt their own activities.
Secondly, the insecurity maelstrom has rendered further postings of corps members to bandits-cum-insurgents-infested enclaves uncongenial. Hence, further postings to such states as Katsina, Zamfara, Sokoto, Kaduna, Kebbi, Borno, Benue, Plateau, Niger, Kogi, Rivers, Kwara South and North where the insecurity challenge is more endemic should be suspended forthwith.
The authorities should use the hiatus to frontally confront and decimate the vile militias in those states where they are now even taking territories to keep them safer. Corps members’ postings can then resume in those places as soon as relative peace is restored.
