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.

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