The NYSC was created to bring Nigerians closer. It should not become a route through which the state sends young people into danger
Something is seriously wrong when a country compels graduates to travel hundreds of kilometres to an unfamiliar state in the name of national service, knowing that some of the roads on that journey have become kidnapping corridors.
The latest abduction of prospective corps members from Ibadan puts that question squarely to the government.
On Independence Day, gunmen attacked two buses carrying graduates from Ibadan to NYSC orientation camps in Abia and Akwa Ibom. The buses were intercepted around Umunoha, on the Owerri-Onitsha Road in Imo State.
Police confirmed the abduction. The number of victims has varied across reports, but families said about 20 prospective corps members were taken. Security agencies later located the suspected hideout by drone but said an immediate assault was complicated by reports that the area had been planted with improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
By Sunday, families said the kidnappers had cut their ransom demand from N50m per victim to N5m, and alleged that some captives were being beaten. Those claims need independent verification. The central fact does not: young graduates travelling to fulfil a compulsory national obligation were abducted on the way.
And this is not an isolated warning.
NYSC security risks are no longer hypothetical
A 2023 investigation by the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) found that at least 83 corps members were abducted over a decade, 40 of them in Rivers State alone. The PUNCH also found out that more than 20 corps members were killed in attacks between 2015 and 2026.
In January, prospective corps member Lateefah Binuyo was abducted in Kogi State while travelling to an orientation camp in Taraba. She regained her freedom after 10 days in captivity.
In May, corps member Eunice Ameh was abducted in Maitama, Abuja. She regained her freedom after a ransom was reportedly paid.
Also in May, a corps member was among four people killed when suspected bandits attacked travellers on the Jikamshi-Funtua road in Katsina State.
On 26 August, 15 corps members were abducted on the Aloma-Egane Expressway in Kogi State. Security forces later rescued them.
In February 2023, 15 corps members travelling from an Imo orientation camp to Lagos were abducted in Ihiala, Anambra State. Police rescued them.
These are not merely unfortunate incidents around the NYSC. They expose a structural problem: the movement of corps members is predictable, their destinations are known, and their obligation to travel is not optional. The state therefore has a heightened responsibility to protect them.
The NYSC law makes the state’s responsibility harder to ignore
The NYSC is not a voluntary youth programme. The NYSC Act makes service compulsory for eligible graduates, and the scheme posts most corps members outside their states of origin as part of its national integration objective.
If a graduate decides to travel from Ibadan to Uyo for an adventure and is kidnapped, the government still owes that citizen protection. But when the government tells that graduate, in effect, you must report to this particular place to fulfil a legal obligation, the state’s duty becomes even harder to separate from the journey itself.
The government cannot reasonably say: We ordered you to report there, but how you get there is your problem. That is not national service. It is passing the buck to the people being summoned.
What the opposition gets right on NYSC reform
The reactions from opposition figures and parties have been strong, but they do not all say the same thing. Bolaji Abdullahi, the ADC’s national publicity secretary and a former youth development minister, called for a one-year suspension of the NYSC to allow for reorganisation. He later told Premium Times this was his personal view as a former minister, not the ADC’s official position. He still argued that the scheme remains relevant to national integration but must be redesigned around today’s security realities. That is a more defensible starting point than declaring the entire idea obsolete.
Omoyele Sowore went further. The African Action Congress presidential candidate called for the immediate suspension and eventual scrapping of the NYSC, with graduates allowed to serve in their states of origin in the meantime. Under a Sowore 2027 presidency, he would replace it with a two-year voluntary National Job Corps focused on jobs, skills, public works, technology, agriculture, healthcare and education.
The argument has force, particularly where compulsion meets security risk. But scrapping the NYSC is not self-evidently better simply because the present arrangement is failing.
The scheme was created after the civil war because Nigeria needed institutions that would deliberately expose young people to communities outside their immediate ethnic, religious and regional environments. Its objectives include national unity, integration and self-reliance, and by the end of 2023 it had mobilised more than 5.5 million graduates. That is a lot to throw away in a rush.
Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar have also spoken, but in the statements reported so far, neither has said whether compulsory deployment should change. Obi called for the victims’ immediate rescue and the arrest of their abductors. Atiku urged the Federal and Imo governments to bring everyone home and said a generation is being failed at every stage. Both treated it as an insecurity problem. The scheme that ordered the graduates onto that road did not come up.
Frankly, Nigeria does not need another argument with only two answers: keep everything as it is or destroy the institution. There is a third option. Reform the scheme around the reality of Nigeria today.
National unity should not require a dangerous road trip
The most obvious reform is also the one government has been reluctant to confront: deployment does not have to mean indiscriminate movement across the country. If national integration is the goal, there are other ways to achieve it.
Corps members could initially be deployed within their regions, with interstate postings reserved for locations assessed as safe. High-risk corridors should be removed from mobilisation routes automatically. Orientation camps in insecure areas should not receive graduates simply because a computer-generated posting says so. There should also be designated, secured transport corridors during mobilisation.
It is remarkable that criminals can apparently anticipate the movement of prospective corps members while the institutions mobilising them cannot guarantee that those journeys are protected. The government knows when mobilisation begins, where the camps are, which routes graduates take and which areas keep getting attacked. That is enough information to build a proper security plan around mobilisation.
The NYSC must stop treating security as an afterthought
Another reform cannot wait: a transparent, publicly accessible risk assessment for every orientation camp and major route. Posting should not be driven by manpower needs, with security considered later. The order should be reversed.
Is the location safe? Is the route safe? Can the government provide emergency evacuation? Is communication reliable? What happens if security deteriorates after deployment?
If those questions cannot be answered satisfactorily, the posting should not happen.
No government can guarantee that no Nigerian will ever be kidnapped. That is not the standard. The reasonable test is whether government has taken serious, proportionate and foreseeable steps to protect people it has compelled to make a particular journey. In the case of the NYSC, that obligation is especially clear.
Suspend if necessary, but reform for the future
A temporary suspension deserves serious consideration if government cannot immediately guarantee minimum safety standards. It should not become a holiday from responsibility. Use it to audit orientation camps, map dangerous routes, redesign deployment rules, establish secure transport and create a transparent mechanism for refusing deployment to areas where the risk is unacceptable.
And if government concludes that compulsory service has become irreparably unsuitable, it should replace it with something that keeps its legitimate objectives rather than simply abolish it.
What cannot continue is the present contradiction. Nigeria cannot loudly celebrate national unity while quietly accepting that the price of taking part may be kidnapping.
These graduates did not volunteer for danger. They received call-up letters. They were not travelling for leisure; they were reporting for a government programme. They were not asking for special treatment. They were asking for the most basic thing a functioning state owes its citizens: a reasonable chance of getting where the state ordered them to go.
The NYSC may still have a purpose. National integration still matters. Young Nigerians should still have the chance to understand the country beyond their homes. But national unity cannot be built by compelling young Nigerians to gamble with their lives.
If the state cannot secure the journey it requires, it must change the journey. And if it cannot do that immediately, it should have the courage to pause the scheme, fix it and return with something safer. Anything less asks young Nigerians to bear the consequences of a security failure they did not create.
