ABUJA — Over 500,000 Nigerian graduates are languishing in a bureaucratic purgatory, their dreams deferred by the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme’s crippling backlogs and chronic underfunding—a crisis so acute that it’s sparking whispers of mass non-compliance and demands for a total overhaul of the mandatory program.
Fresh data from the NYSC reveals a staggering 317% surge in pending mobilisations since pre-pandemic 2019 levels, with 78,000 from the 2022 cohort, 212,000 from 2023, 185,000 from 2024, and a fresh 65,000 registered in 2025 still awaiting call-up letters.
Designed in 1973 to foster national unity when universities churned out fewer than 3,000 graduates annually, the scheme now grapples with an avalanche of over 400,000 new entrants yearly, exposing a relic system ill-equipped for modern Nigeria’s youth bulge.
The frustration boils over on social media and in student unions, where viral posts decry the “pointless ritual” as a gateway to unemployment. One trending X (formerly Twitter) lament captures the zeitgeist: “500,000 graduates refuse to register for NYSC this year, you will all crash the system and force a reset of the law and scheme. But let’s keep paying ransom and risking your lives for jobs you are not assured of getting.” While no official boycott has materialized—searches yield zero confirmed refusals—the sentiment echoes a groundswell of disillusionment, amplified by recent portal meltdowns that left thousands unable to register for the 2025 Batch C Stream II, even after a 48-hour extension.
“It’s not refusal; it’s resignation,” says Chinedu Okoro, a 2024 University of Lagos economics graduate stuck in the queue. “We pay fees, endure glitches, and for what? A year of ₦77,000 monthly stipend—up from ₦33,000 with the new minimum wage—while inflation devours it, and post-service jobs are a myth. Over 40% youth unemployment? NYSC feels like indentured servitude.”
Okoro’s cohort, like thousands of HND holders protesting exclusion for part-time ND studies, views the scheme as discriminatory relic, violating constitutional equality clauses and blocking access to federal jobs, postgraduate admissions, and even international visas.
At the heart of the logjam: woeful funding and tech woes. Despite a N430 billion 2025 allocation—including N373 billion for allowances—the NYSC rations slots, delaying batches by months and forcing rationing among institutions.
Portal crashes, blamed on outdated servers lacking auto-scaling or redundancy, have become ritual humiliation: Late confirmations, stalled biometrics, and error-riddled uploads push users to the next cycle, derailing careers.
“A national system serving millions needs cloud infrastructure that expands with demand,” tech analyst Ifeanyi Eze quips. “NYSC’s downtime isn’t glitch—it’s governance failure.”
Compounding the chaos, JAMB’s April 2024 crackdown flagged thousands of “fake admissions,” barring another 14,000 from mobilisation and stranding them in limbo.
Protests erupt: HND grads in Lagos brandish placards—”Say No to Discrimination”—demanding inclusion, while polytechnic alumni threaten nationwide demos, citing ignored petitions to the Education and Youth ministers.
Reform voices grow louder. Civil society groups like the Education Rights Campaign call for voluntary service, digital overhauls, and delinking NYSC from job prerequisites—a “reset” that could liberate graduates from what they dub “ransom to a broken system.”
NYSC DG Brig. Gen. Olakunle Fadeyi, in a November statement, vowed portal upgrades and backlog clearances by Q1 2026, but skeptics abound. “Promises are cheap; action is scarce,” Okoro retorts.
As Nigeria’s youth—over 70% under 30—face a job market where even NYSC certificates guarantee nothing, the scheme’s irony stings: Meant to build a nation, it’s now a barrier to its future. Without swift resets, that viral defiance may evolve from tweet to tidal wave.
