IT had been hard for me, or anybody I had met, to explain the essence of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, beyond the claim that it is an instrument for national integration. But in truth,the service part of the scheme had long been just something the initiators had in their minds.

To say that the scheme, which has supposedly been a vital part of the grooming experience of majority of Nigeria’s current stock of human capital, has not fulfilled the service component of its goal is not to imply that that it has served the purpose of national integration either.

When I took my turn, few of us were willing to go anywhere other than where we wanted to be posted, which, incidentally, always happened to be where we already felt at home, or the places we already had assurances of finding ‘the good life’.

Given what we know, it is difficult to imagine that the NYSC would not share the same fate with some other national projects when we inevitably wake up to the reality of its futility. Wecame very close to that moment, incidentally for totally unrelated reasons,in the aftermath of last year’s general elections when serious questions were raised about the continued relevance of the scheme. To be sure, these questions did not even arise out of concern about whether the programme had fulfilled its national objectives or not. Rather, the national assignment was assessed to be worth the life of an individual, a scenario which turned the NYSC philosophy on its head.

The urgency of rescuing the NYSC mandate, therefore, stems partly from this new, totally unforeseen challenge. It also stems from the fact that, even though the heightened call for the scrapping of the NYSC programme was a momentary reaction to the post-election violence, it was difficult to see how a national posting scheme, which was already plagued by individual preferences in peace times, would have fared in a post-crisis environment.

While the present reforms being undertaken by the Federal Ministry of Youth Development takes a huge credit for perfect timing, I must confess that even a reform advocate like me was astounded by the scale and content of the reforms.

Thatcorps members would now carry out their national service only in these sectors – agriculture, education, health and infrastructure is a resounding statement on how the new role of the scheme is being defined in terms of areas of national priorities. What this demonstrates is more than just a commitment to the relevance of the NYSC scheme. It shows a new desire to apply our human and material resources in a more meaningful way to the development process.

Before this time, no one was really sure what government’s expectations were in terms of addition to national output, derivable from 250,000 graduates each contributing the standard eight hours work-day through the service year. On the other hand, it was easier to see how the scheme had become an annual ritual of a one-year mandatory service,evidence of which is required for future employment or political life. It mattered little that majority of corps members were being posted to locations which already had too many, or to public organisations with little manpower needs. In the end, the rejection rates alone made a very good case for alternative use of Nigeria’s resources. But now, the benefiting sectors do not only provide huge spare capacities for human and material investment to drive economic growth, they contain the key global indicators of human development. Now, also, community development would necessarily entail rural development.

The new reforms also address the equally serious question about efficiency of the internal organisation to carry out its key operations. Even for acasual observer without extensive grasp of the internal operation of the NYSC, much of the distortions in the mobilisation process owes largely to the fact that posting of corps members has been left to the personal judgment of NYSC staff. Of course that was why most people ended up where they wanted to be posted in the first place.

Fortunately, the new reform takes care of this by using appropriate technology to guarantee the integrity of the posting process.Besides, better technology necessarily means better transmission of posting information and more efficient registration process.  It would also help keep out criminals who have exploited the NYSC programme for all sorts of personal benefits.

It is even more gratifying that, apart from this concern with processes of mobilisation and orientation, the content of the orientation programme is being reviewed in a way that some of us had not even conceived in the first place.

It had been taken for granted that the one-month orientation has to be all about physical activity. But with the benefit of what the reform prescribes, it is now obvious that an orientation programme designed to include skills acquisition provides so much more justification for the resources that it is almost unimaginable that the scheme had operated for 40 years without it.

The context for these new provisions (skill acquisition and sectoral focus)can be found in the conclusion that finally, the NYSC scheme is evolving into the purpose it was meant to serve, and more – an investment in a national training programme which prepares young Nigerians for paid employment as well as capable owners of the factors of production. It also appears to me that the selected sectors would be particularly useful in cultivating true sense of service which is key to addressing the attitude problem in public service delivery today.

In a different way, it excites me to imagine the impact that this sectoral focus would have on the recruitment habits of most organisations in Nigeria, and consequently on the overall rate of employment in the country. Owing to the distortions in the previous posting pattern, the scheme had become a source of cheap labour for most companies, especially in the big cities.

The concentration of corps members in these cities then presented these companies with a perverse incentive to have very limited permanent staff on their payroll. With these reforms,it now means that the only source of manpower available to these companieswould be the labour market.

All said, it must be noted that the security issue surrounding the safety of serving corps members remains a major challenge, and even more so by its currency.

Mr. ADIE IYAJI, a commentator on national issues, wrote from Calabar, Cross River State.