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Agnes Ezennadozie had called her
husband, Peter, to alert him of what looked like trouble. “She called
me and said ‘Honey, it’s like a riot is taking place’,” recalled Mr
Ezennadozie, barely holding back tears. “I asked her how safe she was
and she said they were at a police station. Later, she called to say
the hoodlums were surrounding the station and I told her to run from
there. As we were talking, I heard a scream and then nothing,” he added.

He called her line
repeatedly without reply. Some two hours later, a male voice came on
the line to tell him that the owner of the phone was seriously injured.
He later learnt that his wife of three months had been taken to the
Federal Medical Centre in Bauchi. He prevailed on the hospital staff to
take his wife to a particular hospital in downtown Bauchi. From there
she was moved to Abuja for further treatment. She died 12 days later.

Good programme gone awry

It was dreamed up
as a scheme to engender unity among Nigeria’s youth fresh from the
nation’s higher institutions. But the fate of the National Youth
Service Corps (NYSC) currently hangs in the balance as recent events
threaten to undermine its continued existence.

Established in 1973
by the Yakubu Gowon administration, the scheme was also aimed at
healing the wounds of a 30-month civil war which the nation had
survived three years earlier. The scheme offered the fresh graduates
the opportunity of serving the country outside of their states of
origin. There is no doubt that many would not have known about the
different cultures in the country if not for the scheme.

However, in recent
times religious and now political crises in parts of the country,
especially the north, have turned what was supposed to unite Nigerians
into an objectionable venture.

This latter
development was poignantly brought to the fore by the senseless killing
of many innocent youth corps members in some northern states,
especially Bauchi and Kaduna, by gangs of youth protesting the loss of
their favoured candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, at the just concluded
general elections.

The protesters
descended on the hapless corps members who served as ad hoc staff for
the nation’s electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral
Commission. When the dust settled, there was general weeping and
anguish by a shocked nation. Many of its youth had been slaughtered
like animals in the course of serving their fatherland.

In the midst of all
this is the very heart-rending case of Mrs Ezennadozie, who was
carrying a six-week old pregnancy after her wedding in February this
year. Mrs Ezennadozie, who hailed from Achina in Anambra State, died as
a result of the first degree burns she sustained in Bauchi when the
hoodlums invaded and set fire to a police station where the corps
members had fled to for safety.

Indescribable pain

Mr Ezennadozie
wondered what his wife had done to those who murdered her to deserve
such a fate. He wondered why Nigerians, especially northerners, had no
wish to, in his words, “Stop the rubbish act of killing innocent people
because of religion and politics.”

“How can someone
just kill an innocent girl? The federal government should stop this act
of northerners,” he said. As a solution to that, Mr Ezennadozie is of
the opinion that those from the north should serve in the north while
their southern counterparts should serve in the south. That way, he
said, “if the north wants to kill its own children, it would be their
choice.”

While receiving the
remains of Mrs Ezennadozie at Government House last Thursday, the state
governor, Peter Obi, said, “Today casts a pall of darkness over Anambra
State as we receive the corpse of Mrs Ezennadozie who as you know was
among the corps members hacked down in their prime during the
post-presidential election crisis that engulfed parts of northern
Nigeria.” He regretted that the late Agnes Ezennadozie paid the supreme
price while answering a call to national service.

“Unfortunately, a
programme designed as a veritable instrument for national integration
turned disastrous when uninformed youths hiding behind the veil of
politics visited violence on fellow Nigerians,” Mr Obi lamented.

He called on the
federal government to henceforth assure corps members outside the
northern zone of adequate protection or nobody would be willing to
serve again. “We will serve the nation but not at the expense of our
lives. We must serve the nation but the nation must protect us, if not
we will not serve. We must negotiate before you (corpers) get back,”
the governor said, noting that he had asked the federal government to
ensure that those behind the act do not go free.

He promised that
his government would not allow the deceased’s family to walk alone and
pointed out that the state government had fully taken over the funeral
expenses of the slain corps member.

To scrap or not to scrap

Some who spoke to
NEXT after the short reception expressed worry over the incessant
killings in the North and called on the federal government to either
review the NYSC scheme or scrap it. They echoed the widower’s line that
those from the various zones should serve in their zones.

“The NYSC should not be abolished but that corps members should serve in their zones,” said Nkiru Orji, a journalist.

Tony Anyanwu, also
a journalist with the Nigerian Television Authority, said that much as
he sympathised with the deceased’s family, he would still insist that
the scheme should be modified rather than scrapped. He however said
that if the country was desirous of keeping the scheme, it must
urgently deal with factors causing what he called “the incessant
crises” and that offenders should face the law.

For Shadrack Nnanna
of the National Orientation Agency, corps members should be allowed to
choose where they would prefer to serve in order for them to accept
their fate whatever happens. He suggested that, alternatively,
graduates should be subjected to military training in lieu of national
service and afterwards helped to settle down in society afterwards as
is the practice in Egypt.

Given that many parents would not want to give up their children to
another horror similar to the post-election violence, the likelihood of
the runaway corps members across the nation returning to their host
states in the north continues to look bleak as the programme totters on
the brink of total rejection by Nigerians.