THE DISCRIMINATION INHERENT IN THE NYSC SCHEME.

The social system is not an unchangeable order beyond human control but a pattern of human action. Poverty is not a certain amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation among people. Poverty is a social status. Lately, poverty alleviation has been and still is the major challenge confronting our society as a whole. The clamor for poverty reduction is so pervasive that there are hardly anywhere you wont find people agitating for change. This goes to show that majority of Nigerians live in abject poverty.

One need not wonder how and why the mantra change was so easily welcome, adopted and is been internalized by most of the masses. Poverty and inequality, however, are intimately bound up with one another. Both as an analytic issue and as a policy issue, there are severe limitations in attempting to deal with poverty without examining the inequality in opportunity.

Policy should be fashioned towards relieving the material deprivation of huge numbers of members of the society. Any policy that is specifically and not generally directed is not only discriminatory but actually a crime against humanity and as such should not be allowed to see the light of the day or even be conceived in the first place.

The Intrinsic Value of Equality and the basic reason it matters to us is because there is something valuable about human relationships that are unstructured by differences of rank, power, or status. Material equality, or at least the absence of extreme inequality, has intrinsic value and is in some sense a human right.

There are several rationales behind this assertion. One follows directly from the observation that basic needs are socially contingent. From the assumption that people have a fundamental right to meet their basic needs and that basic needs are socially determined.
Therefore with greater inequality the larger will be the group of people who cannot meet those needs, who are being denied by the socio-political structure this fundamental right. Then, since there is intrinsic value in people having their fundamental rights and, in particular, this right of meeting their basic needs, equality in opportunity becomes of intrinsic value too.

A just or fair society is one of relative equality. The guide for judging social policy and social change should be such that the social order is not establish to secure the more attractive prospects of those better off unless doing so is to the advantage of those less fortunate. I am advocating for equality of opportunity in order for all persons to be treated equally and genuinely in situations of opportunity.

Yes, the introduction of the NYSC (National youth service corps) was no doubt a necessity considering the rationale behind its creation. At the time, Nigeria needed a gesture of unity that could create an enabling environment for social cohesion and coexistence after the rate of division that was experienced during the civil war era. So the idea was right and to a great extent, it has served its purpose. Change as a process becomes necessary if what is on ground to a greater extent is no longer serving the purpose for which it was created.
Now to the main issue, there is actually a great deal of discrimination inherent in the NYSC. It is an invincible catastrophe that if not attended to sooner, might become a thorn in the economic flesh of the country later.

The NYSC policy of being called to serve if your age falls below the 30 and exempted if you are above 30 is really discriminatory. This can be said to be a brother to the idea of age restriction inherent in employment opportunity. For instance, the Nigerian military( The Army, Air force and Navy), paramilitary (Police force, NSCDC, Immigration, custom, prison service, etc.) and most government agencies, even the private sector have similar age restricted policy on employment.

That is, if a person graduated when he is above 30, it means their eligibility to be employed becomes very slim. There is another set of persons that graduate well within the age allowed to serve, they serve and start searching for job here and there till eventually, they are above 30 and fall into the afore mentioned group with slim eligibility to employment. This is to say that the older an individual graduate gets, the harder it is to secure a gainful employment which even in the real sense is even scarce.

There is a clear cut difference between idea and reality, ideally, a person is supposed to graduate and get employed as easy as this may sound, the opposite is the experience in reality. Due to the demand of reality, the idea of age falsification to meet up with this demand becomes the order of the day. That in itself is a form of corruption known as fraud; falsification of information in order to derive personal gain.

For instance, when you see some serving core members, some of them are so old that you can at a glance be sure that this person is nothing less than 40 yrs. of age, and then you start to wonder how such an individual came to be serving his/her fatherland. The answer is not far-fetched, just as i have mentioned initially, age falsification is the reason for the season.

According to Robert k Mertons theory of anomie, there are social goals and socially approved means of attaining these goals, when a person abide by these goals and means of attaining them, he is considered a conformist, while those that either accept or reject an aspect of it are considered as deviance.

For instance, anomie theory posits that attaining wealth is a major goal of every members of the society, but not all members of the society possess the means to do this, especially members of minority and disadvantaged groups. Those who find the road to riches closed to them experience deviance, because an obstacle has thwarted their pursuit of a socially approved goal. When this happens, these individuals may employ deviant behaviors to attain their goals, retaliate against society, or merely make a point. The primary contribution of anomie theory is its ability to explain many forms of deviance.

The theory is also sociological in its emphasis on the role of social forces in creating deviance. The question then is why do some persons conform to norms and others deviate? It all boils down to demand of reality. Another point is that those who are comfortable with the status-quo want it to remain because they benefit from it a lot; they also want it to remain because they are afraid of what the new condition might have in stock for them. But like we said, change is constant and as such has to be guided towards general public good and not just the good of specific few.

From all said, exempting some group of persons from partaking in the NYSC scheme might entirely not be a bad idea, but it rather beg the question of what then becomes the faith of this group of persons in the face of the discrimination inherent in the pervasive age restricted policy on employment, bearing in mind that job in our society is as scarce as some commodity in the market place. Its not news that in our society, those saddled with the function of employment into the few available jobs, sells them to the highest bidder as against placing round pegs in round holes. This is a form of bureaucratic corruption and should be checked.

In conclusion, a lot of graduates are presently caught up in this vague but catastrophic discrimination inherent in the National youth service corps policy of call to serve and exemption. I suggest that the government reconsider the policy and make the needed modification so as to make the Corps an all-embracing policy of general good. Giving those above the age of service the option of serving or exempting might be a good way to start in tackling with the discrimination inherent in the scheme.

Another idea that might be useful in dealing with the discrimination inherent in the age restricted policy on employment could be to increase the age limit from 30 to lets say 35, that way, those who due to the policy could not apply might be giving a chance to take shots at those opportunities without necessarily falsifying their age to meet up with the demand of reality.

EBIDUNMI GODWIN KOLAWOLE.

very long would read it later

The hard truth.

Tooo long
Kilode na

na project work. too long jare