An open letter to the
NYSC Director-General
Posted by: Mohammed Haruna
on May 8, 2013
in Columnists, Mohammed
Harunna, Wednesday
8 Comments
Brigadier General Nnamdi Okorie-
Affiah,
Director General,
National Youth Service Corps,
Abuja.
Sir,
THE CASE OF ABUBAKAR IDRIS
USMAN
First, let me apologise for this
open way of drawing your attention
to the rather pathetic case of a
serving corps member who seemed
to have set the record of probably
being the first to be court
marshalled for allegedly offending
the statutes of your parastatal. I
have decided on this approach
because the issues involved are of
public interest.
Second, let me declare my interest
in the case. Abubakar Idris Usman,
the corps member in question, is
my son, in the African sense. He
graduated from Abdullahi Bayero
University, Kano, with a BSc
(Second Class Upper) in Mass
Communications. His father, who
we all call Danjuma Yaro, and I
have known each other since our
childhood over 60 years ago, partly
growing up as we did in the
midtown Kaduna neighbourhood of
Layin Shaba, aka Nupe Road, one of
the city’s oldest neighbourhoods
which is predominantly Nupe.
Danjuma himself is Hausa but
speaks Nupe nearly as fluently as
any Nupe. Not only that, Jamila,
one of his daughters and elder
sister to Abubakar, has been
married for over fourteen years to
one of my younger cousins. They’ve
have had four kids. Abubakar is
one of their favourite uncles.

Abubakar has been the subject of
an unrelenting punishment by your
subordinates in Kaduna which has
been grossly out of proportion to
his alleged offence. This open letter
is an appeal to you to put an end
to his travail.
The source of his seemingly
unending trouble was his article
published in the CAMPUSLIFE
section of The Nation of November
22 last year entitled “In Kaduna,
Corps members sleep in toilet.” The
article, accompanied by a telling
picture of a uniformed corps
member sitting beside a bunker
bed in a toilet converted into a
room, sought to highlight the plight
of corps members at the NYSC
camp in the state as a result of its
hosting about 700 graduates more
than the previous year’s number.
The offending piece quoted one
corps member as saying the hostels
on the camp were “unfit for human
habitation.” It quoted another as
saying the overcrowding in camp
“posed a high risk of disease and
personal safety.”

The article also mentioned the
Camp Director, Mrs L. D. Mburi, of
complaining “bitterly” about female
corps members who used to
defecate into polythene bags in
their hostels. It also mentioned the
State Co-ordinator, Mrs. Victoria
Ango, as telling you on a visit to
the camp that the abandoned
hostel projects on the camp would
be completed in three week’s time
as a way of meeting the challenge
of inadequate accommodation on
the camp.
Predictably, the articles got the
dander of the NYSC authorities in
Kaduna up.
The first sign that Abubakar was in
trouble came at lunchtime on the
very day his article was published.
The sign came through an urgent
summons on his phone for him to
go to the State coordinator’s
office. On arrival he was
confronted by an angry Mrs Ango
who demanded to know who put
him up to his “wicked” article. This
was in the company of an equally
angry Mrs Mburi and the Camp
Commandant, Captain Dada.

After a barrage of angry words he
was told that he’ll make the record
as the first corps member to be
court marshalled in the state. He
was given enough time to get
dressed up in his uniform for the
trial which was to take place in Mrs
Mburi’s office. On getting to the
hostel to dress up he was told by
some of his colleagues that some
NYSC staff had been there and had
ransacked his bag and taken away
his digital camera, jotter, and his
other mobile phone.
At the venue of the trial he
discovered that two of the corps
members he quoted in his article
had also been summoned. This was
in the afternoon. However, the trial
did not begin till 7 pm. It was
chaired by Mrs Mburi. Others on
the panel included a State Security
Service (SSS) representative, a
police representative and a civil
defence representative. According
to Abubakar, no one questioned the
accuracy of his article. Instead the
panel’s concern was who sponsored
him and how he was able to file the
article when he was supposed to be
on the camp; a silly question, if
you ask me, in this digital age of
the ubiquitous internet. The panel,
he said, also wondered if he
thought he could fight government.
And so on and so forth.

All three apologised profusely for
the embarrassment they said the
article must have caused the state
NYSC authorities and pleaded for
clemency. Abubakar, however, said
he tried to explain to the panel that
he meant no harm and was only
practicing what he was taught
about the watchdog role of a
journalist as a mass
communications undergraduate.
The panel was not impressed.
Instead at the end of the trial at 9
pm it sentenced the other two to
severe drill. On his part as the
main culprit, Abubakar was
sentenced to the same drill, his
phone seized and was told he will
get a three-month extension of his
service without pay.
The following day his father,
Danjuma Yaro, appeared on the
camp in the morning at the
summons of the NYSC authorities,
presumably for briefing about his
son’s offence. Danjuma went along
with one of the most respected
elders of our neighbourhood,
Sheikh Namadi. Both pleaded with
the camp director for clemency for
Abubakar. Their pleas fell on deaf
ears; Abubakar would be forgiven
alright, she said, provided he
published an advert in three
national newspapers retracting his
article.
Anyone who knows what newspaper
advertisements cost, especially in
Nigeria, would agree that this was
impossible for anyone on a corps
member’s relatively miserable
allowance. Worse, it would amount
to committing professional suicide
for any journalist to retract a piece
whose accuracy and fairness was
never in question, never mind a
budding journalist like Abubakar
whose entire career was in front of
him.
Abubakar sought my advice as a
father and a veteran journalist he
said he’d always looked up to. I
told him he was foolish to have
written the article as a corps
member but he must never retract
it as long as he was sure of his
facts. He heeded my advice and
paid a stiff penalty for it; he was
refused his posting letter when the
camp finally closed on November
25.

Before then his case took a very
sinister turn in the afternoon of
the very day his father was
summoned to the camp. That
afternoon, he said, he was made to
appear before an SSS staff who
accused him of being a member of
Boko Haram. That was a most
cynical manipulation of the young
man’s self-will and of his
appearance; unlike his clean-
shaven father, Abubakar may have
sported a goatee but anyone who
knows Layin Shaba will testify to
the fact that no child of the
neighbourhood has ever displayed
extreme religious tendency.
Abubakar was interrogated
extensively by the SSS operative
but was not detained. Presumably
the operative was satisfied that
someone was merely trying to
frame the stubborn young chap.
For weeks after the close of camp
a stalemate ensued between
Abubakar and the Kaduna NYSC
authorities. Each time he went to
the headquarters for his posting he
was told he could only get it if he
retracted his article. Eventually,
they relented – or so it seemed –
and posted him to teach at
Government Secondary School,
Warsa Piti, in Lere Local
Government of the state. This was
in spite of his earlier plea for
posting to Kaduna North on health
ground as someone who had tested
positive to Hepatitis B in 2012 and
needed routine medical check up.
However, even in seemingly
relenting from their position, it
was not without an element of
cynicism; the same people who
refused to post him until he
retracted his article issued him a
query that he had been posted
since November 28, 2012 but had
“refused” to collect his letter in
violation of a section of an NYSC
bye law! He was given the 24 hour
to answer his query.
For a while it seemed the
authorities were satisfied with his
response. Last month it emerged
that they weren’t but were merely
biding their time to punish the
hapless chap even more. First, he
was served with a letter relocating
him to Delta State “on health
grounds.” When he wrote back to
say he never requested for
relocation he received two letters,
the first signed by an assistant
director on behalf of the state
coordinator and a second by the
state coordinator herself, which
said he was being relocated as
punishment for his “malicious
article” in The Nation. In addition,
the letters said he will serve an
extension of 30 days.
Both letters said the reposting was
at your directive.

Sir, I wish to appeal to you to
review your decision. Abubakar has
been punished enough by his initial
posting, considering his health
challenges and the trauma he’d
suffered through the delay in
posting him. Besides he has never
been paid his allowances since he
resumed at his primary post. His
offence may have embarrassed
your staff in Kaduna but it was
never malicious.
I hope, sir, that you will answer the
prayers of a father who prays that
his son would one day become the
kind of journalists any country that
wants to progress needs plenty of.

www.thenationonlineng.net/new/columnists/an-open-letter-to-the-nysc-director-general/