By Julius Nsikak
Umoh Boniface remembers the cold before anything else. Then the fear that followed. It was the night of 13 December 2024 along the Rumuji Expressway in Rivers State. Boniface, a National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member serving in Osun State, was travelling home to Akwa Ibom for the Christmas holidays.
Like many corps members moving across Nigeria at the end of the year, he was navigating a transport system marked by uncertainty. There was no direct vehicle to his destination, so he opted for a longer route through Port Harcourt, planning to continue the journey the following day.
Not long after leaving Port Harcourt, just a short distance from the Rumuji Police Station, the vehicle was suddenly flagged down. Six armed men, dressed in what appeared to be security uniforms, ordered the passengers out. Within moments, five of them, including Boniface, were dragged into the surrounding forest. What followed was not a robbery. It was captivity.
They were beaten repeatedly, tied up and tortured. Hunger came quickly, eating up their strength. Sleep was impossible. Fear kept them awake as unfamiliar sounds echoed through the forest. The kidnappers spoke casually about killing, discussing human life as if it were disposable. Two women among the hostages were raped. One was violated in the presence of her husband.
In that forest, Boniface realised that survival was no longer guaranteed. Human life had become a bargaining chip. When ransom demands were eventually made, Boniface was faced with a grim reality. He could not raise the money. His captors responded by covering his head with a sack, binding his hands and legs, and dragging him toward a river.
“I had already accepted that I would die,” he recalls.
His life was spared only because a church congregation intervened, raising part of the ransom on the condition that he would repay half later. It was an act of compassion that saved his life, but at a cost that continues to haunt him.
Months after his release, Boniface is still repaying that debt. He is undergoing medical treatment for spinal injuries sustained during the torture. Christmas, which he had set out to celebrate with his family, was spent in a hospital bed. His service year changed from national service to long-term trauma.
Even now, long-distance travel triggers anxiety. Police checkpoints no longer signal safety. The khaki uniform, once a symbol of patriotism and service to the nation, now evokes fear.
Boniface’s ordeal is not an isolated tragedy. It is a window into the dangerous reality of Nigeria’s National Youth Service Corps, an institution created to unify the country, but now increasingly associated with insecurity, trauma and death, despite vast public resources pumped into it.
From National Healing to a Service Year of Fear
The NYSC was established on 22 May 1973 by General Yakubu Gowon in the aftermath of Nigeria’s Civil War. Conceived as a tool for national healing, reconstruction and integration, the scheme was an attempt to break ethnic and regional barriers by deploying young graduates to states other than their own for a year of compulsory service. For decades, it worked.
In the 1980s and 1990s, corps members travelled across Nigeria with relative ease. Communities welcomed them. Landlords offered subsidised accommodation. Strangers provided food, protection and guidance. The khaki uniform carried goodwill. National service was widely seen as a rite of passage. It was a fitting contribution to nation-building and a shared national experience. Today, that social contract has collapsed.
The NYSC year has become a season of anxiety for families across the country. Parents speak of constant phone calls, prayers and fear. Many now actively discourage their children from accepting postings to some parts of the country, quietly undermining the foundation of a scheme built on mobility and cultural exchange.
“No parent sends a child to university to bury them during national service,” says public affairs analyst Mrs. Emem Nkereuwem. “Yet that fear has become normalised.”
To her, insecurity is only part of a deeper, structural problem. While acknowledging the historical relevance of the NYSC, she argues that the scheme has failed to evolve with Nigeria’s changing realities.
Many corps members, she says, are deployed to institutions where they add little or no value and receive little in return. In overcrowded public schools, they function as stopgap labour rather than contributors to long-term development. Others are posted to offices with no defined roles.
At the end of the service year, most return home with no new skills, no savings and no clear employment pathway. Nkereuwem, therefore, questions the continuous expenditure on uniforms, kits, logistics and postings that produce no measurable outcomes.
“National service should not be an extended waiting period for unemployment,” Nkereuwem argues. In her view, the scheme should be redesigned around structured skill development in agriculture, manufacturing, technology and small-scale enterprise sectors with the potential to absorb young people meaningfully.
Without such reforms, she warns, the NYSC risks becoming an expensive ritual disconnected from both national development and the lived realities of Nigerian youth.
Kidnapping, Neglect and the Cost of Serving Nigeria
The dangers faced by corps members today are not imaginary. They are documented, recurring and deadly. In March 2025, national outrage followed the abduction of Rofiat Lawal along the Benin–Ore Expressway. She was travelling from Edo State to resume duty in Oyo State when she was kidnapped. Her abductors initially demanded ₦20 million before reducing the amount. She regained her freedom after four days, following the payment of ₦1.1 million raised through personal contributions.
Lawal later disclosed that her abductors threatened to force her into marriage and relocate her to Sokoto if payment was not made. One of them reportedly wore her NYSC uniform in an unsettling situation that underscored how the symbol of national service had become entangled with fear.
In August 2023, eight corps members travelling from Akwa Ibom to Sokoto were abducted in Zamfara State. Some remained in captivity for as long as eleven months before their families raised millions of naira to secure their release.
In November 2024, Aisha Shittu, posted to Kaduna State, was kidnapped from her residence in Chikun Local Government Area. Her abductors demanded ₦500 million.
On 9 January 2025, Miss Abasifreke Joseph, an Akwa Ibom-born corps member serving in Kogi State, was abducted along the Enugu–Kogi highway while returning to her place of primary assignment after the Christmas break.
Data from the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) shows that at least 83 corps members were kidnapped between 2013 and 2023, with 63 cases occurring between 2018 and 2023 alone. Rivers State recorded the highest number. Between 2023 and 2025, kidnappers reportedly extorted more than ₦80 million from abducted corps members.
Survivors consistently confirm that ransom payments, not security interventions, secured their freedom. For serving corps members, insecurity is layered on top of neglect. Many places of primary assignment provide no accommodation, forcing corps members to rent houses in unfamiliar communities. Transportation is often self-funded. Healthcare is largely out of pocket.
Etoroabasi Udoh, currently serving in Nasarawa State, describes daily life as a careful negotiation between duty and survival. Beyond orientation camp, he says, there is little follow-up on welfare or security.
“When you fall sick, you manage,” Udoh says. “If it is not malaria or typhoid, you are on your own.”
The emotional toll is rarely acknowledged. Young people living far from family, surrounded by insecurity and isolation, face mental stress without counselling or support systems.
For prospective corps members, fear begins even before deployment. Aniefon Sunday Ebenezer describes collecting her call-up letter as crushing and not celebratory. Instead of excitement, she felt anxious about where she would be posted and what dangers awaited her.
She argues that deploying graduates to unfamiliar regions has become counterproductive under current security conditions. Without local knowledge or community networks, corps members become easy targets. While acknowledging that regional deployment weakens cultural exchange, she insists it should be considered as a temporary measure.
“National unity cannot be built at the cost of human life,” she says.
Kidnapping is not the only risk. During election cycles, corps members serving as ad hoc staff for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) have repeatedly been attacked. After the 2011 presidential election, post-election violence claimed over 800 lives, with corps members deliberately targeted in several northern states. Similar incidents have occurred in subsequent elections.
Many others have lost their lives on Nigeria’s dilapidated roads while commuting to and from their places of service.
Recently, worsening insecurity forced the NYSC to withdraw corps members from Mbaa community in Kwande Local Government Area of Benue State, confirming the fears of many families that the scheme can no longer guarantee safety.
These dangers stand in stark contrast to the enormous financial resources allocated to the NYSC. For the 2025 fiscal year, the Federal Government proposed ₦430.7 billion for the scheme, the highest allocation in its history. ₦307.6 billion was earmarked for the new ₦77,000 monthly allowance. Additional funds covered feeding, kits, welfare, transport, insurance, ambulances, accommodation facilities and skill acquisition materials.
Yet corps members continue to travel unsafe roads, live in communities that are not safe and rely on personal funds during emergencies.
Comrade Utitofonidara John of the Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) describes the scheme as well-intentioned but trapped in nostalgia. According to him, there is a glaring disconnect between budgetary allocations and operational outcomes.
Despite massive funding, he says, there is little evidence of investment in security infrastructure, emergency response systems or long-term welfare mechanisms. Responsibility for the safety of corps members remains poorly defined, allowing federal, state and local authorities to shift blame when incidents occur.
“The system protects itself,” he says. “Administrators and contractors are benefitting, while corps members carry the risk.”
He calls for a comprehensive audit of the NYSC, its finances, objectives and continued relevance.
For Umoh Boniface, national service ended not with celebration, but with survival. “I served Nigeria,” he says quietly. “But Nigeria almost did not protect me.”
That statement captures the crisis at the heart of the NYSC. The question confronting Nigeria is no longer whether the scheme once mattered; it is whether, in its current form, it still should.
Until safety, accountability and purpose are restored, the khaki uniform will remain less a badge of unity and more a risk to life.
This report was first published on 6/1/2026 by TheMail
