Ethnic cleavages and national integration: The impact of the National Youth Service Corps

This dissertation investigates whether the National Youth Service Corps Scheme, a program placing college graduates to serve communities outside their home-states, has been successful in fostering national integration in Nigeria.;My concern for national integration and the apparent intractability of ethnic cleavage, political instability, and socioeconomic stagnation in Nigeria motivates this study. I examined the National Youth Service Corps so as to determine its contribution to Nigeria's national integration.;My survey used a list of people who had attended University of Benin and some of who have served in the National Youth Service Corps. The list was verified by staff of the State Directorate of the National Youth Service Corps to separate those who served in National Youth Service Corps from those who did not.;I mailed 400 questionnaires to a randomly selected sample of 200 respondents of equal representation of those who served in the NYSC Scheme and those who did not. The respondents, both males and females, were between the ages of 29 and 32 years at the time of graduation. The majority of the respondents who were the pioneers of the NYSC in 1973 were born in 1943, while those who could not join because of age disqualification were born before then.;It was found that respondents who served in the NYSC were less likely to cite ethnic reasons as a cause of Nigeria's lack of economic progress. They were more likely to prefer having the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria appoint the Chief of Defense, and reducing the importance of the military in Nigerian government. They thought that reducing the amount of ethnic conflict and maintaining the present system of federal government were important for improving the Nigerian political system. However, they were less likely to agree that it was important to create a loose confederation of states. Respondents who served in the NYSC held more positive attitudes toward ethnic groups and the NYSC. They were more likely to agree that national integration was advantageous and to disagree that it had disadvantages. The analysis used crosstabulation and multiple regression.