What I remember about ‘Performing’ NYSC

Most of the time, when you come across an article about the NYSC experience, the writer feels the need to convince the readers to avoid the NYSC program.

I am not going to do that. Instead, I am here to tell you why you should look forward to it.

I won’t lie by telling you NYSC is an amazing experience. It’s not. It is a painful experience, one that leaves you feeling like you have a crack in your skull, but not to worry, I am here to walk you through it.

In the beginning, you have to go for an orientation program in some remote camp for three weeks. My first encounter at camp was a queue so long I wanted to turn back and run home, but mama didn’t raise no bitch.

I had begun to settle into my struggle when I saw a girl whose father had parked beside the queue with an umbrella in his hands, some candy for his daughter in the car, and was there to make sure she was comfortable.

She probably thought it best not to do the usual Nigerian thing which would have been to ‘keep space’ and retreat to the comfort of her car because of the presence of the supervising soldiers.

Nigerian soldiers, blurring the class difference since the first coup.

The father of the girl kept moving his car at a pace that matched that of the line. This was annoying, and made it extremely difficult to mind my business.

I decided to buy a pouch from a suspicious looking woman. About an hour later I found out it was fake.

Never buy things from suspicious looking people guys.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, rain started to fall. The rain beat us for about 10 minutes before the camp officials saw it fit to direct us to some form of shelter.

When you get into camp, you get sorted into a platoon which is a group of participants with similar identification numbers. One of the most infuriating activities that happened at camp was the reading of ‘fake deep’ write-ups you have to listen to every morning, as attendance of morning devotion was compulsory for ‘goodie-too-shoes’ such as myself.

We had praise and worship sessions that were actually fun. Everyone sang and danced to the lord, even those who had a rumble in the bushes the previous night. But who I am to judge?

Nobody. I am Nobody.

Then daily 5 hour lectures. Yup you read right…A WHOLE 5 HOURS…

Songs like Olamide’s Shakiti Bobo could be heard when the supervisors noticed a lot of corp members dozing off, which happened with off-putting frequency.

The lectures were confusing, poorly planned and executed. We could have someone come tell us there are no jobs, and right after have the next speaker disprove everything the previous speaker had just said.

Then the odourless food and coloured water served at the camp kitchen.

The queues for shitty food were even worse if you were into that sort of thing.

We also had soldiers waving their guns at 5am in the mornings. I’m just thankful they weren’t police, because everybody knows the Nigerian police signed a contract with the god of accidental discharge.

Some of the soldiers were actually fun guys, one even asked me if I had ‘blow’ one night at ‘mami’ market (this is where we bought pretty much anything). I had never felt so bad for not having something in my possession like I did that day. I didn’t even know what the said blow was, but not being able to provide it made me feel really terrible.

We left camp and headed straight for what NYSC calls ‘Place of Primary Assignment’, this is NYSC-speak for the organisation you’d work for, for the rest of the service year. A lot of us thought it would be a first come, first serve thing.

We were greatly mistaken

We quickly rushed out of camp because an uncomfortable number of people were probably posted to the same organisation as you, which reduced your chances of getting accepted. This assumes you like where you get posted anyway, which I imagine doesn’t happen very often if you leave your posting to the forces that be.

Yes, when NYSC posts you, you can still get rejected.

We didn’t know we had already lost the battle. When I got to my place of primary assignment, fresh from camp in full NYSC khaki (which I didn’t ‘slimfit’ because I wanted it to show exactly how I felt about NYSC) and luggage feeling like Eddy Murphy in coming to America, I was greeted by a congregation of NYSC corp members such as myself waiting in the reception of the organisation with posting letters.

Then it hit me like an anvil mysteriously dropping on a cartoon character’s head.

I was part of what was called ‘Stream 2’ batch. Let me quickly explain this. Let’s assume 5000 corp members are posted to a state and for whatever reasons they cannot go to orientation camp at the same time, they get split into two. The First Batch (2500 Corp Members) got out of camp a month before I did. So basically these people got a one month head start and still hadn’t gotten work.

Even before the director of the organisation rejected me, I already knew what was coming so I wasn’t even phased.

As I made my way home, I remembered one of the lectures we were made to sit through in camp, where some woman said that a good percentage of us would get rejected. I remember a lot of people around saying things like ‘God forbid’ and ‘It is not my portion’. I wondered where they were and if they had also been rejected.

Moving on…

Nothing surprises you like the first time some random person accosts you on the road saying ‘Corper Wee’ because you’re in your NYSC uniform.

Now this form of greeting usually went like this in camp:

Speaker: Corpers Wee

Corp Members: WAA!!!

Speaker: Corpers Wee

Corp Members: WAA!!!

Speaker: Corpers wee wee wee

Corp Members: WAA WAA WAA!!!

Corp Members:

Still Corp Members:

Me during this unfortunate exchange:

This was one of the things I hated the most about orientation camp. Kind of tragic how it’s one of the things I remember most vividly.

But nobody told me I’d be dealing with it ALL THROUGH SERVICE YEAR.

Now when Ahmed from yonder walks up to you and shouts ‘Corper Wee’ with all the strength he can possibly muster, three things could happen here:

You could put on your Denzel smile and enthusiastically reply ‘Waa’..

Look him dead in the eye and walk away…

Or my personal favourite reaction…

If you’re anything like me, you learn to ditch the khaki while travelling or frown seriously if for whatever reason you have to move around in it.

I eventually found a place to work by myself. Everybody knows once you get rejected, if you wait around for NYSC to help, you would be sitting on a metaphorical long thing.

On the first day of resumption at work, we were taken on a tour of the organisation. I met a group of old men and the conversation went something like this (the main point of the conversation is in CAPS):

Old man: What is your name?

Me: *Mentions name*

Old man: So you’re Yoruba? From where?

Me: Ekiti

Old Man: AH EKITI BASTARD MA LELEYI, when last did you visit your home town?

Me:

Old man:

This conversation pretty much sums up what I dealt with for 8 months at work so I’m not even going to delve into that. It gets me so emotional.

There’s something called Community Development Service where NYSC Corp members are split into different teams with clear objectives in a bid to help the locals. I admit it was a drag at first but quickly turned into my favourite part of the NYSC experience because let’s face it, there was nothing else to do.

I particularly enjoyed an outreach where we visited a secondary school, organised quizzes, gave out prizes, and interacted with the kids. It made me feel all gooey inside. This was probably the one time I didn’t think NYSC was a complete waste of my time.

NYSC also afforded me the opportunity to observe other young people in huge numbers at close range, and all I can say is God help us. There were way too many instances where I wondered if some of these people went to school at all.

I have obviously omitted my experiences with NYSC officials because this post is already too long and frankly I’ve been trying to be a happy person of late, and going into that would derail my efforts.

All in all, NYSC was an experience I want to forget as soon as possible. I think it is grossly underutilised as it is probably one of the few organisations in Nigeria with arms and legs in what should ideally be every local government in the country. And this is as grassroots as it gets if we had serious people running this country.