12:30    Unknown

---

Breaking News: NYSC -Why SAED is a huge threat to the future of Nigeria

he Skill Acquisition and Entrepreneurship Development (SAED) programme of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) was inaugurated in March 2012 to “address” unemployment in the country by teaching corp members skills they will need to be self-employed in today’s harsh economy. What we were told during orientation camp a little over a year ago was that if we learn any of these skills, some of which include fish farming, bead making, makeup artistry, soap making, fashion designing, baking and sewing, we have a strong chance at becoming employers of labour rather than job
seekers.Since its inception, the SAED programme has trained over 500,000 corp members, however,
Since its inception, the SAED programme has trained over 500,000 corp members, however, only 1,600 of the half a million trained have gone on to become full-time entrepreneurs. That’s a 0.32 percent success rate, which is indicative of policy failure of the highest degree.
This failure can be attributed in part to the conflict of ideology SAED programme creates. SAED is focused on wealth creation, by putting corp members through training that turns them into entrepreneurs, its objective is to teach graduate youths how to generate wealth and to make up for years of unbridled corruption, mismanagement and sheer waste that has hindered economic growth in the country.
The SAED director (in my camp) even conceded that it was common for corp members of her generation to have about 3 jobs offers to choose from by the end of the service year. What has changed between then and now is the twin evils of unemployment and poverty that has possessed the graduate youth. Consequently, wealth is now the dominant value of most Nigerians, and most young people go to university to improve their job prospects because we were told that if we want a good job in today’s fiercely competitive market we must get a degree. So why then put us through a programme like SAED which teach us skills we do not need a degree to learn?
The NYSC, I believe is tasked with the supreme mandate to de-emphasise and replace the narratives of money first and individualism with service, academic prowess, honesty, coverage and all the contributions by citizens that bring honour and glory to the fatherland. Therefore, SAED is the antithesis of what youths should be learning during NYSC. It not only distracts scorp members from engaging in Community Development Service (CDS), as there are reports that some corp members attempt to replace weekly CDS meetings with SAED, it also re-emphasises the poisonous narrative today’s youth have come to internalise, i.e. above national integration and service, making money is priority number one.
SAED is not only a travesty to cushion the effects of decades of bad policies, mismanagement and corruption that have delivered us into poverty, it is the mother of all bad policies currently in effect because it teaches mediocrity to the “skilled” young working population and can jeopardise the effectiveness of every other development policy currently in execution or on the drawing board.
This is not to say that SAED programme was not designed with good intentions because there are opportunities to learn soft skills like programming and foreign languages. However, the get rich quick mentality that has possessed the minds of young graduates is causing them to favour skills like cake baking and bead making over, say, learning say German, which takes longer hours to master and doesn’t generate income in the short term.
“We can not entrepreneur our way around bad leadership. We can’t entrepreneur our way around bad policies. Those of us who have managed to entrepreneur ourselves out of it are living in a very false security.” – Ory Okolloh
Reckless policies like SAED that focus too much on short-term benefits and are blind to the long-term aspirations are products of the people that destroyed our educational system. The Nigerian educational system has been in recession for decades, which has in turn affected the quality of education we get from our higher institutions, which puts us at a disadvantage when compared to what is being offered to youths in many other countries–the same youths our Nigerian parents expect us to not only compete with but beat. And if that is the mission, then there exists no strategy worse than SAED to prop up our chances because it is a low skill, labour intensive centred programme, that is consistent with the attributes of periphery economies, according to the World-systems theory of development.
In other words, the government is raising an army of low-skilled workers, and what is more disturbing is that SAED targets the very group (graduate youths) that should be aiming for the stars, filled with the energy, knowledge and drive needed to prosecute real human capital development strategies like the transfer of technology from highly skilled expatriates and multinational companies in Nigeria, learning strategic skills that made them globally competitive, and teaching them mediocrity.