The Nigerian youth is a creature of woes
Left all the time on his own
To contend with all manners of foes
And live a life of little fun
Day and Night he struggles to fend
And the socio-economic structures to tame
His cause, no one cares to defend
Yet he is expected to project the national fame
While studying in school
Who will save him from the strike
He is considered a fool
For people to exploit and spite
I talk as if
Everyone qualified can get admission
But far from it
For others, it is a long-life mission
Thier only criminal offence
Is to allow themselves be born
In a country of callous sense
Where maximum deprivation must be borne
The lecture halls are over-crowded
And where there is talk of scholarship
It is in controversy, shrouded
Who cares for shepherdless sheep
Officials who won’t fund education today
Studied in government schols and paid no tuition
They are hypocrites sustaining the decay
Because of a very selfish intention
The school fee in my state
Is ten times the government’s annual grants
Yet there are facilities of no good taste
I think government is just playing pranks
The Nigerian government
Is making budgets, busy
That is very paramount
And do you think it is easy
Why should it bother
When it doesn’t need their vote
Or about them, ponder
Who can’t a line of the law, quote
Yet when they graduate
They must go to NYSC and serve
A scheme that does fluctuate
And ties down others as an endless reserve
In the 2011 elections
These youth got posted on electoral duty
Where the losers gave directions
For them to be murdered as if guilty
In one such madness
They were butchered, ten corps members
An unrestrained expression of badness
That continues to fan hatred embers
The murder mob was bold
And overwhelmed the police
The Bauchi violence soared
While government officials went to vote with their colleagues
Seven of the corps members were killed
Right in a police station
And with their blood, the scene was filled
Mocking at Nigeria as a nation
The government did not lose
Because it paid nothing for their education
But the families that paid had no right to choose
Where their sons could serve the nation
So an unfortunate percent
Was mobilized adn deployed
To places: many persons
Where government was warned security had deplored
There, many of them died
In the service of a nation that didn’t care
How alone in school, they had toiled
And how in its service, they did fare
Instead, politicians talked
About patriotism in tones so beautiful
Obviously because their sons hadn’t been caught
In the carelessness so pitiful
The thing that so deeply hurts
Is the hypocrisy in the government’s conduct
Such poor leadership halts
The NYSC’s agenda of national contact
Rather than become the hope
Of fresh graduates to promote national peace
It has become an ordeal with which they must cope
And pray to return home in one piece
Once, there was joy
In the scheme when it hadn’t been abused
Then in school, government shared in their toil
And of its use, no one was confused
Now, government must not sit and wait
For its young ones to suffer and come
To the NYSC which is becoming a bait
That snatches them away from home
It must actively participate
In their training and welfare
Then we can begin to anticipate
When the scheme will cease to be a warfare
To me this is a dirge.A lamentation of the goings-on in our pyscho-existence in a nation where the citizens are not treated like beings.God have mercy.
A few typo though( Was mobilized adn deployed), this is a good work.
Thank you @sambrightomo. The poem attempts to capture the hypocrisy that has become a leadership symbol in Nigeria. The Government of Nigeria does not recognise “youths” while they are in school. It is when they suffer and graduate that they must go and “serve” their “fatherland”. But could the “fatherland” not have fathered them while they were in school?
The elders doomed us all. The youths are just a tool in this nation of ours. In as much the tools are always at the recieving end, it has the tendency of inflicting the same amount of pain on the wielder. That is the only way out. Nice piece by the way.
You know, @francis, we have a problem. Too many Nigerian youth are slaves. They are too afraid of everything. How can I allow a government that has not invested in me in anyway to impose compulsory “national service” on me? It will not happen! And more painfully, you go to “serve” this “fatherland” and it deploys you in a strange land and abandons you there to die. Would the government do that if it knew the pain of training someone in school? It’s nonsense, and until the FG reforms the scheme to reflect the true spirit of patriotism and national responsibility, I will continue to consider the NYSC an exploitation.
Na true talk.
No b small tin
Thank you.
Nice one…A dirge for those poor souls…Government needs to change the policy about NYSC…Well done…$ß
@sibbylwhyte. Government does not need to “change” the “policy” about NYSC; government needs to implement the NYSC policy as it is today, with its spirit. The NYSC was not conceived as a tool for government to enslave its young ones – threatening to make them unemployable if they don’t have an NYSC Cerfificate. At the time of its inception, the FG, having invested in training its young ones, posted them out to other regions of the country to make them interact and understand and learn to appreciate the cultures of other components of the nation. In the process, they served those communities where they were posted. This was understandable because the federal government could legitimately demand their services since it had invested in their training. Today, an arrogant Federal Government sits in Aso Rock and waits for you to graduate and come. It does not know, and doesn’t care how you survived the experience. If you did not survive it and died along the way, the FG would not even have noticed! This is not called “national service”, it is called EXPLOITATION.
Moot
Nice piece of dirge. Truly it did captured, vividly so, the hypocrisies and ‘hunting with the hounds and running with the hares’ tendencies of those we have ‘selected’ to rule over our states institution. Few typos noticed. All in all, a nice piece with rhythms that sound melodious to the ears.
Thank you. I’m glad the government’s hypocrisy is well noted. It is however, not limited to the NYSC alone. It’s all over every sector with government presence and it stings like a threatened wasp.
Since that idea with which the scheme was built on, now causes problem..When I said they should change it, I meant that every body should go to their own place of choice jare, instead of going to where they would kill one…Take for instance, those corpers they killed. It would have been their tribesmen and perhaps the deaths wouldnt have occured..
Me ah no go wan go north if i reach dat level o…hehe..
It all stops at the Federal Government’s table. Why would you post your “leaders of tomorrow” to a place that is not adequately secured? Well, you might as well ask me where in Nigeria today is secure?
But the idea of the NYSC was actually to promote national integration among youths. It will not have any use if these guys are posted in the villages where they have spent all their lives.
What we need is strong will on the part of the federal government to make the scheme work. But as it is the case with every Nigerian “thing”, this too is not working.