Disband NYS; it’s an outdated outfit with no useful purpose

I have always wondered why the government was so keen to revive the National Youth Service (NYS).

For a self-proclaimed digital government, revamping the NYS was a reaching back into prehistory.

But with this Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) business, I now know why the NYS had to get such an expensive makeover.  The idea of a national youth service comes from a time of mass army conscriptions, when generals hoped to produce more men for the frontline than their opponents could make bullets.

Countries that still have massive youth services are usually either always on the brink of total war, or extremely tiny. Basically, a national youth service is a product of political paranoia about your neighbourhood.

Soldiering is now technical stuff. We have a professional, all-volunteer army that does not conduct mass recruitment. Neither does it need a mass of trained conscripts available on short notice. The army is no longer about brawn and numbers; it is about brains, tactics and operating technology.

The reformed NYS still features drills under martinets, pageantry, fatigues and boots, all of which come from the service’s disreputable past, when it was used to create cannon fodder for enemy armies. I have been to the NYS headquarters in Ruaraka, and the place is a barracks.

Some claim that this service will instil discipline into the youth. Why is discipline synonymous with the military? This idea of “discipline” is spurious; after all, it was the Air Force that tried to overthrow the government in 1982. And the army was accused of looting at the Westgate Mall. Besides, I do not think it is possible to instil discipline into anyone above 18 – their habits are fixed by that time.

And isn’t the NYS an admission by the government that the school system does not instill discipline? That 12 years of education often leads to ignorant brats who require further instruction to acclimatise to the world?

Of course, some will backtrack and say that the NYS has nothing to do with the military and is about development and vocational training. Must vocational training be done in combat boots?

Do you need to perform drills to be thought of as organised? I have been to several polytechnics in the country, and none seem to have marching grounds. The NYS is exactly like the military, except that instead of a firearm, they carry a shovel when marching.

Isn’t it embarrassing that the supposed symbol of vocational training is a shovel, which requires no training to use. At least a jembe requires more technique. Watching a passing out parade of the NYS makes a visitor think that our country has the most professional grave-digging service in the world. It is deliberately low-tech and values strength at a time the premium seems to have been irreversibly placed on brains.

The charge about he politicisation of the NYS is also correct. In Russia, Nashi, a pro-government youth movement, is given state-funded holiday camps that feature the same quasi-military training. Nashi was instrumental in staging counter protests in 2011 that countered the anti-Putin protests. 

In Kenya, Miguna Miguna revealed in his book, Peeling Back the Mask, how, while undergoing NYS training, they were addressed by senior government officials, who parroted the Kanu party line. If you have a captive audience of youth in a barracks and total control over what they learn, why not exploit them?

You would be a poor politician not to. Why not send them to the street to spontaneously protest your troubles? The NYS, as presently constituted, is an efficient organ of spreading whatever civic messages the government deems fit.

The NYS rebranding was all about politicising it.  The word “presidency” is on every single NYS advertisement and billboard. They do not, for a second, want to let you forget who brought about this new, and improved service.

Clearly, State House and the Ministry of Planning and Devolution want to milk all its perceived success. The NYS, if you remember, was used to cordon off Uhuru Park during the Saba Saba rally, a move that left them vulnerable to the charge of both politicisation and militirisation.

All the good NYS can do will come at a cost. The cost of allowing NYS to build roads is depriving Kenyan contractors of opportunities. The government’s role is to create jobs and not to undercut its citizens from government contracts.

It government should provide only services that the public sector obviously cannot provide.

The NYS should be disbanded because it is a continuation of militaristic folly, a political tool capable of being used to subvert democracy and now, we have found out, another avenue for tenderpreneurship.

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