Killing of corps members: Need to amend NYSC Act
Following the killing of National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, members in some Northern states after the results of the presidential election was released last week and the evacuation of the corps members of Southern origin by their various state governments, Emeka Umeagbalasi of International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law, within the context of the recurring killings in the North, and in particular, the killings of corps members, examines the policy of posting of corpers, proper investigation into the killings and prosecution of perpetrators and perhaps the need to review the NYSC Act, which came into being after the Nigerian-Biafran civil war to properly integrate the country and heal the wounds of the war.
We are deeply concerned over the negative attitudes of the Nigerian political leaders towards the sanctity of human lives and gross mismanagement of casualty figures during national crises. The grossly non-chalant attitudes exhibited by the political class during the recent killings in the North-West and the North-East zones of the country are a clear case in point. For instance, Nigerian authorities were reportedly busy suppressing the actual figure of deaths arising from the killings as well as the number of those missing, injured and displaced, while the leading opposition politicians, including the presidential candidate of the CPC and his running mate were more concerned with “how they were rigged out” and “how they would reclaim their “stolen mandate” in court.
To the best of our knowledge, there had never been any satisfactory, remorseful and categorical public statements from these opposition politicians, except ones compulsorily needed so as to make them escape from being caught by law. Some of them had even chosen “no comment” as their response to this national tragedy of shaking magnitude, yet they want to be voted by most Nigerians, including those that died and got missing as a result of the killings.
The Presidency, on its part, has not gone beyond issuance of public statements with “enough is enough” insignia and “observation of minutes of silence” for those killed and missing. Effective investigations into the killings seem to have been permanently closed courtesy of the Presidency. Not even the actual number of the members of the National Youth Service Corps, posted to the affected areas from the southern part of the country, who died or were injured in the killings could be made available to the Nigerian public, including their parents and guardians.
It may be correct to say that if effective and independent investigations, supervised by international bodies such as relevant bodies of the UNO and the office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, are carried out into the killings, the actual figure of those killed will hit over 1,000, and those injured and those missing will be in thousands. What may easily be estimated by the independent sources is the quantum of public and private property destroyed.
To say that it was only “over 200 people “ that were killed in the killings, circumstantially speaking, is very misleading and unpatriotic on the part of the governing authorities in Nigeria. Using the relevant rules of interpretation, “over 200 killed” may mean “200 to 300 casualties.” And this is a blatant falsehood, more so when over 10 states in the affected areas were deeply engulfed by the killings. In the 2006 religious reprisal killings that enveloped Anambra State, especially Onitsha, for instance, I personally counted at least 80 dead bodies. The killings in Kaduna State alone is far more devastating than the Onitsha bloody episode, yet the authorities in the country, in collaboration with the Nigerian Branch of the Red Cross want us to believe that only “over 200 people” were killed. In well-organised climes, every unnatural death and disappearance must be accounted and catered for, and the killers fished out and made to account for their dastardly acts.
Also, the very aim of setting up the NYSC, which was to heal the wounds of the Nigerian-Biafran Civil War by way of national cohesion and integration, has been defeated. The Scheme has become a “homicidal tunnel”, a sort of German Concentration Camp, which had ceaselessly cost several lives of the country’s gallant fresh university graduates, particularly those from the southern part of Nigeria, posted to the Northern part of the country to serve their mother land. There has also been gross discrimination with respect to postings within the Scheme. For instance, there seems to be a practice whereby the fresh graduates from the core-North, that is to say: North-West and North-East are tactically exempted from serving in the southern part of the country, except those from the North-Central zone, Adamawa and Taraba States. They are restricted to their geopolitical zones and other religiously amenable areas of the country, whereas the Southern fresh graduates, particularly those from the South-Eeast and South-South zones, are tactically forced to serve in the culturally hostile northern part of the country, where they are exposed to different kinds of harmful treatments including premeditated physical violence.
Since January 2011, over 50 corp members have been killed, yet none of their killers had been judicially held accountable. In the said butchery alone, over 30 of them might have been killed. This figure may be much higher if effective investigations are carried out. It is eternally heart breaking for parents or guardians to spend millions of naira to train their sons, daughters or wards as university graduates only for those who ought to have trained them within the context of Social Contract, to facilitate their death owing to gross neglect and socio-political ill-will. Our firm position is that the Federal Government should drastically review the scheme of things within the NYSC Scheme, either by abolishing it or repositioning it to ensure equity and transparency. If the core-Northern fresh graduates cannot go to the Southern part of the country to serve, and adequate security arrangements made to secure those in the core-North, then let the Scheme be brought to an end immediately. There must be thorough investigations to ascertain the actual number of them that were killed in the killings as well as their states’ of origin. The findings of such investigations shall be made public and adequate compensations paid to their families in addition to befitting funerals to be organised for them, all to be catered for by the Federal Government.
Owing to the said despicable attitudes of the governing authorities and the opposition politicians in the country with respect to the killings, only international enquiries will unveil the true situation of things. The Federal Government of Nigeria must grant access to the relevant international bodies such as the relevant departments in the office of the UNO’s Secretary General, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, the AU’s Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court and respected independent international human rights groups like the Human Rights Watch and the Amnesty International. Their presence will no doubt unearth the number of those killed as well as expose those that killed them, how and why they were killed, the relevant social and legal remedies to be so invoked and ways to prevent re-occurrence. They would also ascertain the actual number of the injured and those that got missing.
A country that cannot conduct violence-free general elections is terribly sick. While the highly discredited 2007 general elections cost Nigeria at least 300 lives, her 2011 polls have so far taken the lives of over 500, if not over 1,000 Nigerians with thousands of others injured or missing. Prior to the April 16, presidential poll, over 220 lives were reportedly lost and in the killings that lasted for at least 72 hours, at least over 300 lives were lost. This figure is widely believed to be much higher and subject to effective investigations by credible international independent expert-bodies.
