WITHIN 48 hours of quitting her job as finance minister,Mrs Kemi Adeosun has arrived in the united kingdom,giving the unfortunate impression that she fled from shame and the long arms of Nigeria’s law. I say her departure is unfortunate because she could have walked taller,and Nigerians would have been proud of her if she stayed in the country…and took certain steps to right whatever wrongs they think,right or wrong,she committed against them.Before I come to the steps she could have taken,let us be reminded of her case,and of her blunders.
1)she grew up and studied abroad
2)She had no need to work in Nigeria until the governor of Ogun state offered her the job of finance commissioner
3)Under Nigerian law,all Nigerians who graduate from higher institutions in Nigeria or abroad who are under 30 years of age must serve their country
at home for one year under the National Youth Service corps Scheme (NYSC)
4)No employer is to employ anyone who does not engage in the NYSC and present an NYSC discharge certificate
5)only persons who were over 30years of age as of the time of their graduation are legally exempted from the scheme.As moderated by finances,higher institution graduates within the service age bracket are now exempted if they hold NCE certificates or if their studies were done part time.
Employers who breach this law are liable for prosecution,as are the people they illegally employ.
6)From her letter to President Mohammadu Buhari,Mrs Adeosun came to take the job of finance commissioner from the U.K.She asked her “associates” to process her papers for an exemption from service.She did not name these associates,who should be legally liable for obtaining for her from NYSC touts what her letter admits she has now found to be a fake exemption letter
7)Her letter to the president regrets this,but was hardly apologetic.The president deserves her apology because she embarrassed him and his government,which came to power promising to fight corruption in Nigeria’s system.For that NYSC certificate was corruptly obtained to take a choice job.Mrs Adeosun could have employed lawyers to process her papers, if she thought she had a good case for NYSC exemption.
8)That having not been done,and the crookedness having been found out, she could have been humble and straightforward enough to apologise to the Nigerian people for their widow’s mite contribution to the further fouling of a system they are struggling to sanitise and clean up and to demonstrate her genuineness and seriousness Mrs Adeosun could have immediately, enrolled in the NYSC.
One year in the scheme of things is like a split second. Who knows, President Buhari may win the elections next year and decide to make her a humbled and humble Mrs Adeosun minister. If she enrols for NYSC,Nigerians will be moved to tears.They are a loving and forgiving people.Did we not all express surprise when,after he was toppled from power,Gen Yakubu Gowon did not return home from Addis Ababa but,instead,went on political asylum to the United kingdom and enrolled for a bachelor’s degree in political science? Gen Yakubu Gowon’s blunders had been explained by his critics as due to his lack of higher education.He was dealing with a Lt .col Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu who was educated at Oxford university. Gen Gowon had only military training in Nigeria and at Sandhurst in England.
Reportedly,he did not understand the full meaning of the implications of the conception CONFEDERATION when Ojukwu proposed it,and he accepted ,at their Nigerian crisis peace talks in Aburi,Ghana.When they returned home and the civil service educated him about the implications,Gowon reportedly objected,and Ojukwu stuck to his guns…ON ABURI WE STAND.Gowon not only successfully ended his bachelor’s degree in political science at Warwick,he went on to take a p.h.D degree in political science.
By apologising to Nigerians and enrolling for NYSC immediately ,Mrs Adeosun would have shown she was not opportunistic,but wás merely consumed by the Nigerian morass of which she knew little,having not lived here for long,and would have been forgiving and become a Nigerian reformist,a Nigerian baby.
By fleeing,or so it seems now,she has given more ammunition to people like me who believe it is unnatural for women to rough earthly existence out with men in rugged,obtuse and dirty terrain which,in the wisdom of that Creator who made man and woman from different moulds,one finer than the other,one more suited to certain situations than the other,prefer that men rough it out in the rough terrain and women stay behind,attending to those delicate and more refined aspects of daily life.Isn’t that why their physical bodies are finer than ours?Do the flowing and fruiting and fragrance producing parts of a tree seek to be a change of the tree,the root?Nigeria’s shortsightedness
We cannot blame Mrs Adeosun without blaming ourselves as a people.We could not provide higher education for all young people who are hungry for it,so hundreds of thousands of them go abroad to study.Because there are not enough jobs for those at home,not to mention those who are going to return from abroad after their studies,these ones stay behind,find jobs,marry and settle down.In midlife,they may wish to return home.Is that the time they have to come and enrol for NYSC?Let us resolve this question:If the federal or state governments get the steel project and the rail project right,and they find these projects in other countries being run successfully by Nigerians,and the government wants them to return home to run Nigeria’s projects but they have no NYSC certificates,what would happen?If Nigerian doctors who were born abroad and trained abroad heed government calls to return home but have no NYSC certificate,what happens?Hasn’t the time come to modernise NYSC law to reflect solutions to these modern day inadequacies? Maybe this is a lesson we can learn from the story of Mrs Kemi Adeosun and her NYSC certificate.
NYSC LAW REFORM
Having become an increasingly expensive project for a shrunken economy to comfortably shoulder,can the NYSC not become optional?if it does,can it be extended to 2 years?Where Iam heading is an NYSC project that becomes a recruitment platform for many government agencies such as the armed forces,which would require about a minimum of 6 months for training.We can assume that the economy will continue to expand an flow into neighbouring economies.We can assume,also ,that economic expansion will impel expansion in government institutions and services.The army,navy,air force,police,immigration and customs will enlarge every year as personnel retire and demand for services grow.The optional NYSC,as will then be modernised,could be a platform for recruitment into these agencies .policing will be a huge enterprise and should require multiples of the present 300,000 personnel of Nigerian police.Almost every major Nigerian town now has an international airport.They will require policing .Nigeria is yet to have a serious highway police.The funding will come from travellers.Nigeria must be heading for about 200 or more federal,state and private universities.They need policing.We have not spoken about rail and oil pipelines policing.The list is endless.The NYSC of the future can become a resoirvoir of manpower that will automatically feed the growing needs of public and private institutions.Thanks,Mrs Adeosun for helping us to try and open the door to a possible new phase of the NYSC programme.
