The Director-General of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Brigadier-General Nnamdi Okore-Affa recently lamented the quality of some of the present corps members whom he said were poor in English Language. While speaking during the 2013 Batch 'A' pre-mobilisation workshop in Ilorin on the theme, Generating credible data for a perfect mobilisation process, the NYSC's DG identified the corps members' academic deficiency as the prime reason for their rejection in places of primary assignment. He said it would be a misplacement of priority if such corps members were deployed as teachers in post-primary schools.

 It certainly would be worse than a misplacement of priority. It would also mean a recycling of mediocrity because these corps members can only further damage the pupils who would be unfortunate enough to take tuitions from them. But truly, as the NYSC's DG observed, "it is extremely difficult to re-orient corps members who cannot read" especially since the contact period between the corps members and the NYSC is minimal. If all the institutions which these corps members attended for a minimum of twenty years from primary to tertiary levels failed to impart useful knowledge and skills to them, how could an orientation of just three weeks remould them?

If the sad situation in which the country's tertiary institutions churn out half-baked, unemployable graduates is no longer strange as technocrats and employers who have always brought this issue to national attention would have the nation believe, its co-existence with the high rate of failures in public examinations like the West African School Certificate Examinations (WASCE), National Examination Council (NECO), Universal Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and the various post UTME examinations speaks volumes about the quality of the Nigerian education system and its assessment of candidates.

Such is the vastness and depth of the deterioration in the country's education sector that even first class graduates no longer acquit themselves creditably enough as they reportedly flunked the basic recruitment aptitude tests they were subjected to by the NNPC and similar organisations. To make matters worse, the NYSC scheme which is compulsory has to contend with the issue of fake and extremely incompetent members who are unleashed into the programme by a vastly corrupted procedure. According to the DG, a critical review of the data submitted by institutions producing the corps members showed serious flaws which if unchecked, could cause grave danger to the NYSC. This is because many of them exceeded the admission quota approved by their respective regulatory bodies by as much as 500 percent in extreme cases apart from assisting the corps members to falsify their ages and present unaccredited courses as having been accredited.

Not done, the DG also disclosed that the NYSC had discovered that "many of the institutions producing corps members collect from their graduating students, one form of levy or the other before submitting their names for mobilisation into national service. Others also collect another form of levy before releasing their call up letters to them". On account of these practices, the NYSC has been finding it almost impossible to plan for the corps members who exceed even the safe bounds of acceptable standards of geometric progression. Although the NYSC's DG may have given a lucid explanation for the poor performance of the scheme for a long while, it will be naive of him to expect that the scheme will be exempt from the pervasive rot and corruption in the Nigerian society.

It is not as if the NYSC itself has not assisted the rot to fester. Indeed corps members posted to states which they consider to be uncomfortable have found ways round their problems by sharing their stipends with NYSC officials who look the other way when these corps members return to their states promptly after registering for the orientation and only come back for their discharge certificates. We have had cause to emphasise the cyclical tendency of corruption and its reverberating effects on society's institutions and the facts reeled out by the NYSC's DG can only surprise those who are not familiar with the doleful abyss to which the country has sunken.

It is no longer enough to mourn the country's known woes. It is not helpful and can even be counterproductive. The NYSC's DG should tell Nigerians what his administration can do to tackle the rot. We suggest that the NYSC should update and digitalise its operations in order to ensure compliance by the institutions producing these corps members, go into a working synergy with them and institute sanctions against flouters of the rules including the institutions and the corps members. The corps members who have been found incompetent in their primary assignments can be made to do menial jobs that may not require any high level intellect and or acquire productive skills.

By doing that, facing the challenges courageously and creatively, Brigadier-General Nnamdi Okorie-Affa might as well be reinventing the NYSC which is what we believe the scheme sorely needs.