A rejoinder: The argument was never that nysc is initiation into suffering

By Lanre Ogundipe

On  August 8, 2026, I published an open letter to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the director-general of the National Youth Service Corps titled “SOS To The President: Let National Service Begin With Dignity, Not Suffering.” It was a humanitarian appeal arising from concerns about the conditions confronting corps members during the ongoing Batch B Stream II orientation exercise. I made it clear that the intervention was not political. It was a simple appeal that young Nigerians entering national service should not have to endure avoidable hardship at the point of entry into an institution created to foster national unity and citizenship.

On August 10, Kolawole Johnson published a response in The Sun, titled “NYSC Not an Initiation for Suffering: A Deconstruction of Lanre Ogundipe’s SOS to President Tinubu.” The article was subsequently published in The Guardian on August 11. A response to a public argument is entirely legitimate in public discourse. But before an argument can be deconstructed, it must first be accurately represented.

That is where, respectfully, Johnson’s response misses the point.

My position was never that the National Youth Service Corps is an institution of suffering. I did not question the rationale for national service. I did not dismiss its contributions to national integration. I did not call for its abolition or suggest that young Nigerians should not serve. Quite the opposite. I acknowledged NYSC as one of Nigeria’s enduring nation building institutions and defended the continuing value of national service. My argument was narrower and more practical: an institution can be valuable while some aspects of its operation require urgent correction.

That distinction is important because Johnson appears to construct an argument I did not make and then proceed to dismantle it. My article did not say that NYSC is an “initiation into suffering.” What I wrote was: “National service was never conceived as an initiation into suffering. It was conceived as an initiation into nationhood.” That was a deliberate contrast between what national service ought to represent and what avoidable administrative hardship can make the experience become.

There is a world of difference between saying NYSC is suffering and saying suffering should not be an avoidable feature of the NYSC experience. The first condemns the institution. The second calls for improvement. My article made the second argument.

Johnson is right to draw attention to the positive features of the scheme. NYSC has provided generations of young Nigerians with opportunities to live and work outside their familiar ethnic, regional and cultural environments. Its contribution to national integration remains significant. The scheme has also evolved over the years, introducing various welfare and skills development initiatives. These achievements deserve recognition.

But recognising them does not answer the concern I raised.

The provision of accommodation does not answer what happens to a corps member standing for hours in a congested registration queue. Meals during camp do not answer whether prolonged delays leave arriving corps members hungry and exhausted. Welcome packages and skills programmes do not establish that every stage of the registration and reception process is efficient, humane and fit for present realities. A good provision does not cancel a bad process simply because both exist within the same institution.

This is the central weakness in the attempted deconstruction. My intervention concerned aspects of the operation of the scheme, not the legitimacy of the institution itself. Those are different questions. One can defend NYSC as an institution, uphold national service as an idea and still insist that its administrative processes must be continually reviewed.

Indeed, the stronger our belief in NYSC, the stronger should be our commitment to making it work better.

An orientation camp is more than a physical facility where graduates assemble for three weeks. It is, symbolically, one of the young citizen’s first formal encounters with the Nigerian State in the service year. That encounter should communicate belonging, responsibility and the value the nation places on the willingness of its young people to serve.

If that first encounter instead involves prolonged queues, overcrowding, exposure to harsh weather, uncertainty, exhaustion and other avoidable difficulties, it is legitimate to ask whether the process can be improved.

That is not an attack on NYSC.

It is an appeal to make NYSC better.

There is nothing wrong with expecting discipline from young Nigerians. National service should demand resilience, responsibility, adjustment and sacrifice. It should take young people beyond their comfort zones and expose them to the diversity and realities of Nigeria. But discipline is not administrative disorder. Resilience is not an excuse for poor planning. Sacrifice is not another word for indignity.

We should also resist the temptation to romanticise hardship simply because previous generations endured it. The fact that something was tolerated in the past does not mean it must remain unchanged when circumstances have altered. Nigeria today is not the Nigeria of 1973. The number of graduates has grown. Population has changed. Transportation has changed. Technology has transformed public administration. Security concerns have evolved. The expectations of citizens have also changed. An institution created more than five decades ago must continually examine whether its systems remain adequate for the realities of the present.

Interestingly, Johnson himself appears to arrive at a position not entirely different from mine when he speaks of the need for “honest refinement and sustained political will” to strengthen the scheme. That is close to the destination of my own intervention. I called for a review of camp facilities and operations, better waiting arrangements, safe drinking water, adequate medical personnel, improved registration procedures and a more humane approach to receiving corps members.

My SOS was therefore not a call to dismantle NYSC.

It was a call to improve it.

I am also unconvinced by the suggestion that the force of the argument depends on whether the person making it has personally experienced the scheme. I visited an orientation camp and wrote about what I observed. But even beyond that, public interest concerns should be tested against the facts of the matter, not against the biography of the person raising them.

The question is not whether the messenger has endured every stage of the system. The question is whether the conditions being complained about exist and, if they do, whether they are acceptable.

My intervention was never an argument against challenging young Nigerians. It was an argument against confusing deliberate hardship that serves a purpose with avoidable hardship caused by an inadequate process.

The former can build character.

The latter requires correction.

Perhaps, then, the title of Johnson’s response unintentionally brings us closer together than the word “deconstruction” suggests. He says NYSC is not an initiation for suffering. I agree completely. That is precisely why I wrote that national service should be an initiation into nationhood, not suffering.

I welcome the response because public institutions should be debated and arguments should be challenged. No intervention should be beyond scrutiny. But scrutiny is most useful when it engages the argument actually made rather than one reconstructed for easier rebuttal.

So let me state my position one more time, without ambiguity.

NYSC is worth preserving. National service is worth defending. National integration is worth strengthening. But none of these requires us to defend avoidable hardship.

I did not ask Nigeria to abandon NYSC. I asked Nigeria to make national service worthy of the young Nigerians being asked to serve.

I did not attack the institution. I asked that its operation be improved.

I did not condemn national service. I defended the dignity with which it should begin.

And I remain convinced that a country asking its young people to give a year of their lives to its service should be capable of receiving them with something better than avoidable hardship.

National service is an initiation into nationhood. Let us make sure that the nation they encounter at the gate is worthy of the service they have come to give.

Lanre Ogundipe