Are Corps Members Year-Long Slaves?

 By Emmanuel Onwubiko

The current administration is populated by cabinet-level ministers that are not competent but were simply appointed on partisanship basis. Then, the sharing of the ministerial slots was marred by bribery scandals. Some who are now ministers allegedly paid heavy bribes to key members of the cabal in the Presidency to win a seat to represent their states in the Federal Executive Council.

The man Chris Ngige has become very notorious as the Minister of Labour and Productivity under whose watch due to crass incompetence, thousands of university students sat at home for almost a year due to industrial dispute between government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
He also registered two other unions in the universities as a strategic approach to weakening the strength of ASUU.

So, I wasn’t really surprised to read in one of the national newspapers that this character who for almost eight years as minister of labour couldn’t bring up and win the negotiation for increased wages for public service workers including corps members,  but he was quoted as tasking the incoming administration to address the issue. The minister said that the incoming administration of the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, should review of the current minimum wage of N30,000 currently obtainable in Nigeria.

Ngige, who was a member of the committee that negotiated the present minimum wage in 2019 from N18,000 to N30,000, noted that the country’s minimum wage should be reviewed every five years to fit current standard of living.

The minister further mentioned that he would include in his handover notes that the discussion surrounding minimum wage should start immediately the new government is sworn-in, ahead of its implementation, which he said should be in May 2024.

He said the discussions would involve the public sector, private sector and state governments, and according to the last bill passed, should start a year before it officially takes effect.It was that unproductive statement from Chris Ngige that reminded me of the near servitude of multitudes of youngsters who are graduates of tertiary institutions and are engaged in the year-long national service under the National Youth Service Corps which recently clocked half a century of its establishment.

I imagined that each of these young graduates served in different fields including in such sensitive areas as medicine, pharmacy,  legal, teaching and other ancillary services.

But do you know that each of these graduates doing the national service under the NYSC earns just N33,000 per month? The former Director General of the NYSC Major General Shuaibu Ibrahim once told a select audience in Abuja that doctors doing NYSC are the key service providers in virtually all the rural communities in Nigeria.

These corps members give a lot of added value in the nation-building process, but all they get is just peanuts. So, how does anyone in government where these public officials are experts in pilfering public funds, would expect that a human being in Nigeria of the 21st century will survive on the slave wage of N33,000?

A big bag of rice in the market is N45,000. A container of powdered peak milk is about N20,000 and there is no renting of accommodation like the one derisively called  ‘face me, I face you’ or one room self-contained in any part of Nigeria that is less than N250, 000 per year and these corps members posted to different places,  do not get the luxury of having their attached institutions provide them with accommodation. Those who served in the 1980’s were provided large accommodations by places of their primary assignments. But it is no longer so.

Yet, these youths from far-flung places are paid peanuts barely enough for a retiree in Arondizuogu to buy his weekly snuff.

So, I ask, are these corps members slaves of some ministries, local government areas and states for one year? What crime have they committed to be given such odious maltreatment? Are they not citizens of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? So, why pay them slave wages?

I must state here that the management of the National Youth Service Corps may be constrained somehow and probably handicapped statutorily regarding the increment of allowances for corps members because basically, increments of public service allowances and wages are the mandates of the Salaries and Wages Commission which is domiciled within the Presidency.

So, the NYSC management that would have naturally like to pay them living wages, can’t do more than what the government provides for them.

I will cite a typical example. But the NYSC management needs to push up the issue of comprehensive adjustments of the allowances of corps members to meet up with contemporary economic demands and then the central administration through the Salaries and Wages Commission can actualise these improved allowances for them. This slave wage paid to them constitute gross violations of the fundamental rights to the dignity of human person and is almost like subjecting them to servitude which is absolutely unconstitutional. These human rights provisions are replete in the chapter 4 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria of 1999, as amended.

Not too long ago, a senior director in the NYSC alluded to the fact that some government agencies are subjecting NYSC members to mistreatment that is certainly way below how a human being in the 21st century should be treated.

The Coordinator of National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Anambra State, Mrs. Yetunde Baberinwa, recently urged employers of youth corps members in the state not to treat them as cheap labour.

She said the scheme frowns at the under-utilisation and unfair treatment of corps members by their various employers and it is not acceptable.

She said that corps members are not to be paid on commission but on an agreed monthly allowance not less than N10,000 to motivate them and augment the Federal Government allowance.

Speaking to journalists on the sideline of the programme, the principal of Willie Obiano Secondary Enugu-Aguleri Anambra East council, Mr. Amaobi Joseph, said the corps members sometimes are difficult to manage.

He said some of them travel out of the state without permission and knowledge of the school management. He also decried the dressing mode of some corps members, which he said are indecent and poor.

The secondary school principal conveys the impression that most of the government agencies engaging corps members see them as slaves and talk down on them. How does the mode of dressing relate to their wellbeing and welfare whilst working under government agencies including teaching in schools?

In some places, these members aren’t even supported with some allowance whereas in others even in Abuja, they are given as little as N10,000 monthly as a stipend.

In the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs in Abuja, the directors perpetually deny corps members of any stipends and so these youngsters depend on the N33,000 allowance paid to them by NYSC to survive. It is alleged that most federal ministries, parastatals and departments of the Federal Government, siphon the stipends approved in their in-house budgets to service the corps members and support them in little ways.

How can an average person support his or her survival with the paltry N33,000 allowance per month? This is the lowest form of crudity and wickedness.

The corruption-ridden INEC most times even shortchange these young citizens of their financial entitlements even after making them go through the risks of conducting elections in Nigeria that are often volatile, deadly and violent.

For instance, corps members, who worked as Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Adhoc staff within Oshodi-Isolo Local Council in Lagos State, recently decried poor treatment meted to them by INEC officials before and after the Presidential and National Assembly election.

Corps members who worked as Presiding Officers (PO), within the axis of Oshodi during the election process, said that their welfare expectations before the elections were not met, rather they were treated poorly throughout the entire exercise.

This is one of the reasons some persons are actually calling for the abolition of the NYSC since the corps members are practically turned into labourers who are made to do some very demeaning things that lowers their self-dignity including part-time prostitution just so they can put foods on their table.

How can a parent be happy to know that his child that he funded his or her education for years are being practically turned into modern-day slaves and why can’t even such bodies as the United Nations that campaigns against modern-day slavery be asked to intervene and compel the Nigerian central administration to at least improve the allowances to between N80,000 and N100,000 per month?

Specifically, the news from the National Bureau of Statistics regarding the rate of inflationary trends in Nigeria is much more than horrific. Then to even realise that our statistics are not gathered following global best practices,  will now tell us that what we are even told may be heavily challenged ethically, meaning that they may way lower than the actual facts.

As arguments on the accuracy of Nigeria’s inflation report heighten, Yemi Kale, the former Statistician-General of Nigeria and the Chief Executive Officer of the National Bureau of Statistics has admitted that the index weights and basket used for measuring Nigeria’s inflation is outdated and need review.

Kale left office in 2021 and was replaced by Simon Harry. Kale who is now a partner and chief economist at KPMG Nigeria stated his position during a recent interview.The former NBS boss said, “The inflation rate might not completely reflect current activity because the basket is outdated.”

The International Monetary Fund said in the ‘Nigeria: 2022 Article IV Consultation’ that the index weights and basket deployed is outdated.
Bismarck Rewane, the Chief Executive Officer of Financial Derivatives Company is one of the economists that has been at the forefront of faulting the inflation figures emanating from the NBS.

Bismarck had argued that the NBS basket for measuring inflation was constituted back in 2009.The consumer basket is supposed to be reconstituted every five years, Rewane argued.

Nigeria’s inflation was 21.91 per cent in February 2023 but Rewane measured inflation above 40 per cent if the basket is ‘reconstituted’.

Be that as it may, let us even get the latest statistics on inflation in Nigeria and then we realise how bad the economy is for NYSC members earning this paltry N33,000 allowance per Month.

Nigeria’s inflation rate has risen to 21.91%, compared to January 2023 inflation rate, which was 21.82%.The percentage represents a 0.09% point increase.

The rise in the inflation rate followed the naira crisis across the country and uncertainties relating to the just concluded presidential election.
So, scientifically and otherwise, we can deduce that the N33, 000 allowance per month paid to corps members is nothing but a slave wage.
*Onwubiko is Head of the Human Rights Writers Association Of Nigeria and was National Commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria.