1.0 Introduction
The NYSC Mobilization Unit in the Student Affairs Division is responsible for the co-ordination of the multi-staged processes required to mobilize students of the University for the National Youth Service Corps scheme. Aside the actual mobilization which is usually carried out three (3) times a year (Batch A, Batch B and Batch C), the Unit entertains complaints from students on any matter that relates to the one (1) year compulsory scheme. Also, the Unit offers assistance to students by providing necessary information and clarifications on matters of mobilization, remobilization and concessional posting. This entails collections and collation of data on all prospective corps members from the various corps producing institution nation-wide whose graduates qualify for enlistment into the scheme. Nigeria graduates from foreign institution report directly to the directorate headquarters Abuja, for the evaluation of their certificate preparatory to deployment. Foreign- trained graduates should note that only national who graduated before they turned 30 are eligible to serve irrespective of their age on arrival in Nigeria, it is age at graduation for the first degree that matters.
The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is a programme that involves Nigerian graduates in the development and integration of their country. There is no military conscription in Nigeria, but since 1973 graduates of universities and later polytechnics have been required to take part in the NYSC programme for national service (Marenin, 1990). It was explained that one of the expectations of the programme is that corps members should be posted to cities and states far from their homes and states of origin. They are expected to mix with people of other tribes, social and family backgrounds, to learn the culture of the indigenes in the place they are posted to. It is a way to engender unity in Nigeria, to help youths appreciate other ethnic groupings in the country. During the period of service, there is an “Orientation” period of approximately three weeks which is spent in a camp away from family and friends.
There is also a “passing out ceremony” at the end of the year and primary assignment followed by one month of vacation.
The programme also help in creating jobs opportunity for a lot of Nigerian youths. An NYSC forum dedicated to the NYSC members was recently built to bridge the gap amongst members serving across Nigeria and also an avenue for corps to share job information and career resources as well as getting loans from the National Directorate of Employment. The NYSC programme is a programme that prepares youths to work after tertiary education in universities, polytechnics and their equivalent. This program is suffering a lot of setbacks such as posting a graduate of science programme to non-science oriented place of primary assignment and like wise other disciplines. Some corps members, due to lack of information, do not effectively perform their service. It is expected that this study would help to profer solution(s) to these problems.
1.1 Background Of The Study
The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is an organization set up by the Nigerian government to involve the country’s graduates in the development of the country. There is no military conscription in Nigeria, but since 1973 graduates of universities and later Polytechnics have been required to take part in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) program for one year.
This is known as national service year.”Corp” members are posted to cities far from their city of origin. They are expected to mix with people of other tribes, social and family backgrounds, to learn the culture of the indigenes in the place they are posted to. This action is aimed to bring about unity in the country and to help youths appreciate other ethnic groups.
There is an “Orientation” period of approximately three weeks spent in a camp away from family and friends. There is also a “passing out ceremony” at the end of the year and primary assignment followed by one month of vacation.
The program has also helped in creating entry level jobs for a lot of Nigerian youth. An NYSC forum dedicated to the NYSC members was recently built to bridge the gap amongst members serving across Nigeria and also an avenue for corpers to share job information and career resources as well as getting loans from the National Directorate Of Employment.
Looking at Nigerian, NYSC was created to foster unity among Nigeria’s about 250 ethnic groups and to create a sense of nationhood and selfless service among young people. There use to be two NYSC batches, namely batch A and batch B. However, with so many graduates waiting for NYSC call up, NYSC now have three batches, batch A, batch B, and batch C.
The NYSC programmes runs for about 12 months and during that period, graduates of Universities and Polytechnic are deployed to serve in states that are not their state of origin.
1.2 Statement Of The Problem
Nigerian universities and polytechnics are presently producing thousands of graduates every year. After graduation, most students waste extra year before they go for service. NYSC presently using manual system in their data processing; this involves the use of people, pens and papers in records keeping. This method of data processing reveals a number of problems which includes:
- Records to be kept in are often too large, diversified and complex to be processed manually.
- Most often some names are omitted as a result of manual processing
- Statistics of yearly NYSC members are hardly correct as a result of manual calculations
- Students are made to contend with missing their service year as a result of no call-up letter.
1.3 Objectives Of The Study
The main objectives of this thesis is to develop and implement an automated deployment or mobilization system of corps members to their place of primary assignments using NYSC corps members. The specific objectives are to:
- Develop a multicriteria decision deployment model for NYSC; and
- Implement a web-based NYSC multicriteria decision system of deploying corps members to their places of primary assignment for Kaduna State.
- Design and implement a central database system that would serve as NYSC database, which will contain information of all the graduates that are waiting for national youth service corps.
- To generate students call up letters.
- To efficiently and effectively mobilized post qualified students.
1.4 Scope Of The Study
The research work will cover among other things:
- NYSC Registration
- Call up Letters
- Analysis on population of the students for NYSC posting.
1.5 Limitations Of The Study
Many factors have limited this study, some of these factors are:
Time
The time allocated to research work for this study was greatly constrained due to intense academic activities involving the researcher.
Finance
The major constraints for this study occurred in the form of inadequate funds. The present high cost of material, access to a personal computer unit for running and debugging of the application program, transportation expenses to and fro the site of computer etc. militated against the smooth and easy advancement of the work.
