Ethnic cum Religious issues in Dressing Styles of NYSC Female Corps Members

Abstract

The paper examines aspect of gender issues that may be defined as NYSC dress code or styles as it affects faith and believe of the mobilized graduate youth. This becomes relevant against the background of the light it sheds on the ethnic and religious character and compositions of Nigeria that was to lead to the Civil War (1967-1970).  Paper foreground its narrative on the fundamental issues the Ebonyi NYSC camp episode raised in 2019. It thus, interrogates,  the history of NYSC dressing codes,  the ethnic, religious and regional  backgrounds of the involved prospective female corps members  and the  interpretations the event provides with  the aim of  suggesting ways how  female dressing issues could  be resolve without generating  further actions and reactions from females sex of opposite religions in the country. It will also in addressing issues that are capable of endangering the religious beliefs of corps members and scuttling the discipline the NYSC Scheme seeks to inculcates. The paper finds aside other explanations, that the wearing of skirts in Ebonyi camp by the Christian prospective female corps members  epitomizes a fundamental clash between the forces of the old and new order in the progressive match of the society to higher plane of civilization and modernization. The paper concludes that building a nation in a multi ethnic and religious  State like Nigeria is a conscious and gradual process that involve  accommodation of varying interest groups and more so, since NYSC itself is not  yet in a state of perfection, stakeholders and scholars should put heads together for fruitful deliberation on key developments in the institution particularly in the area of dress codes  for females that revolves round the wearing of hijabs and skirts by  corps members in a manner the tone of  ethnic, religious and sectional differences would not be blown out of reasonable proportion as NYSC  journeys  to the promised land under the charismatic leadership styles of the type of Major General Ibrahim Shauibu in the twenty-first century...