Growing up for me wasn’t very luxurious. I became very responsible at a very tender age, never really having the typical childhood that most kids had. I never played much football with the boys, never played spinning the bottle, or anything spin-able, for that matter, and throughout my secondary school year, video games or SLUM BOOKS were not part of my adventures. To add to my repertoire of “childlikelessness” (back then), I didn’t appreciate the simple playfulness of the idea that SS3 students write all over their shirts in plain ink as a way to celebrate the completionof their WAEC and NECO examinations.
I barely understood that one should have that kind of life growing up. Again, even though the experience held some familiarity whensome of my classmates wrote on their shirts after their final year papers in the university, it still had a certain feeling of bewilderment for me.
Getting into NYSC was a different ball game.Although no one above the age of 30yrs is allowed to undergo NYSC, and there is allowance for those that have climbed the educational ladder up to master’s degree and even Ph.D. (as long as they still fall under the age of 30yrs), I felt like the community I was getting into will acquaint me with mature personalities.
My camp experience was lovely and the people I met added a lot of spice to the experience. I felt like I belonged to a community and it was very easy to blend into any group. There was no such thing as segregation or clique; everyone had a sense of belonging.
I have to give kudos to the idea behind NYSC.
But what really should NYSC mean? What should the participants take from it at the end of their service year? Should it be allowed to remain? Or is it a temporal form of employment?
Funny as it may sound, it has become the norm that some people try to sneak into the NYSC camp in order to eat from the regular feeding that corp members enjoy. Still more shameful is the fact that some past corps members lobby and try to get into the pay roll of the government.These have come to be known as the so-called “ghost corpers”. Could this be that these people are over-passionate about serving their country? Or they are just trying to help themselves out of the poverty or poor state of their conditions, “unemployment”.
I however want to see corps members as heroes that have been sent into different parastatals to add a blend of youth to these sectors. In fact, government too understands that young people are needed to prime move the different public sectors as well as the private sectors.
I like to look at corps members as heroes that are yet to enter their own story. A hero’s night might be moist with apprehension but his day surely is brighter with enlightenment. Enlightenment! We are nothing without it.
I propose that corps members and youths alike should be oriented to answer the big question, “who am I?”
They should be able to take a structured and methodical approach to life and to work as well. They must have a realistic view of their strengths and weaknesses, and believe that other people may be better placed to guide them. They must learn to see the key issues and then tackle them in rational and logical manners, thinking through all the options systematically before making their decisions.
They must know how to communicate their ideas persuasively both verbally and in writing, cutting through jargons to provide a clear message for their audience (this would go a long way to distinguish them from their predecessors in leadership) They must know how to cope when circumstances change, and willing to adapt.
Finally and most importantly, the youths and corps members must be generally curious about why things happen in the way they do, always wanting to derive the patterns that define our society, and courageous to proffer their own solutions where the need arises.
As for me, I am a Nigerian youth, presently undergoing my service year and willing to be the voice of the young people, a spokesman of the truth that is often denied, an apostle of the common sense that is not common, and a pointer to the obvious that is always overlooked.
By Ukadike Ikechukwu
Getting into NYSC was a different ball game.Although no one above the age of 30yrs is allowed to undergo NYSC, and there is allowance for those that have climbed the educational ladder up to master’s degree and even Ph.D. (as long as they still fall under the age of 30yrs), I felt like the community I was getting into will acquaint me with mature personalities.
My camp experience was lovely and the people I met added a lot of spice to the experience. I felt like I belonged to a community and it was very easy to blend into any group. There was no such thing as segregation or clique; everyone had a sense of belonging.
I have to give kudos to the idea behind NYSC.
But what really should NYSC mean? What should the participants take from it at the end of their service year? Should it be allowed to remain? Or is it a temporal form of employment?
Funny as it may sound, it has become the norm that some people try to sneak into the NYSC camp in order to eat from the regular feeding that corp members enjoy. Still more shameful is the fact that some past corps members lobby and try to get into the pay roll of the government.These have come to be known as the so-called “ghost corpers”. Could this be that these people are over-passionate about serving their country? Or they are just trying to help themselves out of the poverty or poor state of their conditions, “unemployment”.
I however want to see corps members as heroes that have been sent into different parastatals to add a blend of youth to these sectors. In fact, government too understands that young people are needed to prime move the different public sectors as well as the private sectors.
I like to look at corps members as heroes that are yet to enter their own story. A hero’s night might be moist with apprehension but his day surely is brighter with enlightenment. Enlightenment! We are nothing without it.
I propose that corps members and youths alike should be oriented to answer the big question, “who am I?”
They should be able to take a structured and methodical approach to life and to work as well. They must have a realistic view of their strengths and weaknesses, and believe that other people may be better placed to guide them. They must learn to see the key issues and then tackle them in rational and logical manners, thinking through all the options systematically before making their decisions.
They must know how to communicate their ideas persuasively both verbally and in writing, cutting through jargons to provide a clear message for their audience (this would go a long way to distinguish them from their predecessors in leadership) They must know how to cope when circumstances change, and willing to adapt.
Finally and most importantly, the youths and corps members must be generally curious about why things happen in the way they do, always wanting to derive the patterns that define our society, and courageous to proffer their own solutions where the need arises.
As for me, I am a Nigerian youth, presently undergoing my service year and willing to be the voice of the young people, a spokesman of the truth that is often denied, an apostle of the common sense that is not common, and a pointer to the obvious that is always overlooked.
By Ukadike Ikechukwu
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