My Honest NYSC Orientation Camp experience.

 First off before I start my 1000+ words of undiluted sarcastic rants I want to put it out there that Nysc Camp is The Ghetto! With a capital G!! sho get?. 

Ok now that I have given you a preamble I can now begin the rants *takes a deep breath*  so to get the whole idea behind this scheme, we ought to go back to the beginning of it all. NYSC is an acronym of NATIONAL YOUTH SERVICE CORP a paramilitary scheme set up by Gen Yakubu Gowan on 22nd May 1973, this scheme was designed as a means to promote post-conflict peace in Nigeria after the Nigeria Civil war that took place between 1967-1970. After the war there was said to be this fear amongst civilians, there was no inter state travels, people had no interest in leaving their states, local governments and villages, a fear which is very understandable when you look at how brutal the civil war was and how the war was not just a military and civilian war but an inter-tribal war. 

The Yakubu Gowen administration came up with this scheme that involves all university graduates and subsequently polytechnic graduates within the age of 18-29 to serve for one year in different sectors of the country in what is called A SERVICE YEAR. Over the cause of different administrations and DIRECTOR GENERALS the scheme and purpose of the course has changed. 

The orientation camp is one of 4 core parts of the NYSC scheme which are THE ORIENTATION CAMP, THE PLACE OF PRIMARY ASSIGNMENT(PPA), COMMUNITY SERVICE DEVELOPMENT AND THE PASSING OUT PARADE(POP). The orientation camp is a compulsory (unless, one is unfit then he/she can exempt themselves from the camp)3weeks training and orienting of what the service year is all about, corp members are deployed to all 36 states and are camped in a particular camp venue through out these three weeks in all 36 states.

Now we have a little knowledge about what the whole scheme is about, let me go straight to the main course. I was in the batch c stream 1 of 2022 and we began arriving the orientation camp from the 2nd of November till the 5th of November(although you can arrive in camp anytime as long as it isn’t the last week of camp), I was deployed to Abuja and I camped there too. I was supposed to report to camp on the 5th of November being Saturday but I had a friend who was deployed to Abuja and had reported to camp on the 2nd of November in the same batch and she convinced me to report to camp before Saturday being my actual date of reporting if I infact wanted to get a good hostel space and I’m really grateful because if I hadn’t come on Thursday i wouldn’t have met the amazing hostel roommates and now friends I met on the day I came to camp.

First off if you’re in the northern part of this country you’ll know better how brutal the sun can be during the dry season and God!! Was the sun brutal on the day I came into the camp and every other day that followed 😒. The whole process of verification was exhausting not to talk of the compulsory Covid test that ruined my sinuses all through the camp, my God was I reconsidering my decision to come to this camp by then but as a bad guy I said, if I can successfully finish my final year clearance (if you went to a government university in this country, this statement will be relatable) then what is nysc camp verification process that I can’t get through with. We queued through all the processes of verification and in-camp registration and as God will have it in that process I met some really sweet girls who infact became a very good reason I still stayed through out the camp and also got good laughs in between. 

Fast forward to the platoon stand, ladies and gents this is the place you will be given your uniforms and Hol’up hol’up! YOUR UNIFORM CAN NEVER SUIT YOU PERFECTLY, “my uniform is my size” “my uniform fits me”  That is not even a thing as long as nysc is concerned, if it’s not your khaki, it will be your shoe, or the day wears, look!!! One or all of it must have a problem, emphasis on MUST and amending in the camp market(Mami market) is just unnecessarily expensive(so is every other thing in that market)but you don’t have a choice unless you want to look more hideous than the uniform itself the choice is yours. There’s nothing mami tailors and cobblers can’t do, they’ll even fix a broken heart, they can fix your attitude, they can repair whatever it is !pheww !😮‍💨😮‍💨

We wake up by 3am 😓 so we can have time to bathe before heading out by 4:30am for morning parade, now this waking by 3am is very much optional, you can just decide to sleep till  4am but we were all expected to be at the parade ground by 4:30am for morning devotion and parade. The Muslims go to the 🕌 mosque to pray while the Christians headed to the parade ground for devotion,until 5:30am when the Muslims joined the Christians in the parade ground for the tiring morning speeches and parade.

 In my legendary camp there was this thing called  “No walking just double up” I.e you won’t be allowed to work round the premises only jogging and nothing seems to piss me off like when I’ll be minding my corper business and just casually walking around and I hear “Double double”  bruh!! that used to piss me off to the point where it no longer got to me. Everyday I was going above and beyond my move goals, it will just be 6am or 7am and my fitness app will just notify me that I have beaten my move goal and burnt so so so calories, calories that I want to accumulate Emi Nysc activities is milking me *cries silently* . Or are we going to talk about the morning cold hewwwww!! or the afternoon Sun😭 lord lord!! I beg your pardon master Jesus but was this the plan ?.

Now let me tell you, “There’s no sleep for the wicked and Corp members in camp” and this is not even cap, people were falling ill from lack of sleep and Rest, the activities were so closely packed that you don’t even know how to get yourself checked before the next whistle or trumpet sound goes off, after the first week the camp clinic became full with sick corp members, people began to take exit to leave camp and are we going to talk about how often people were passing out,I’m sure the Red Cross volunteers grew some muscles from lifting fainted people everyday especially in parade grounds. My batch of corp members were stubborn or at least that was what the officials made us believe. But we sure were a handful not gonna lie, There’s no blessed day we weren’t punished in parade ground, we couldn’t keep quiet to save our lives😭, the camp commandant and excos shortened our breaks because we weren’t obeying orders but if I’m asked I will say “you don’t push adults that hard else they rebel” and this indeed was what happened in my orientation camp and I loved it! this made the whole experience more enjoyable to say the least.

Another very funny thing that became clear to us was how often the camp directors name was mentioned haaaa!! I heard Mrs Justina Ogah’s name more than I’ve heard my name in recent times💀. Now let me take you to the hostel and I’m going to speak based off my own hostel experience. I was in honesty hostel room C, each hostel had 4 rooms in it and they were identified as A,B,C and D. Each hostel had a hostel Governor and I don’t know for other people but honesty hostel Governor was the literal best!!! And now my room C babes 😎 I’ve never met girls as unproblematic as the girl in Room C, very mature and sweet girls( thinking of it now, I actually miss them and can’t wait to see them soon) then there’s room B girls Lmaoooo these girls can’t go a day with out quarreling or having a near fight argument, never ever 😭 we named them toxic room 😂because I can bet they hated each other but hey! What’s a girls hostel without quarrels. I had friends in other hostels but because of how much I loved the company of Honesty hostel room C girls and how calm the atmosphere always is in my room, I rarely visited my friends rooms. 

One activity that grows on you is the Inter-Platoon Competitions. At first it starts with you feeling nonchalant about the competition , you’ll be like “it’s not that serious, it’s just a mere camp thing but with time it grows on you, you find yourself being invested in your platoon wining, you find yourself always cheering them up, you might even volunteer to do some activities, it just gets better, you find yourself being genuinely happy when your platoon wins and also upset when you don’t win especially when you feel the judges didn’t do their work well, you begin to actually grow fond of your platoon mates and somehow they become a big deal to you. This might not be the case of everyone in camp but it sure was my case, I never thought I would even want to participate in anything but somehow I volunteered and danced on the cultural day for my platoon, it was a dying minute thing, I didn’t want to join,I couldn’t remember the last time I danced in a group, I really know how to dance but I didn’t know I would be moved to join my platoon cultural dance, even though my platoon leader compelled me to join. Well never say never and indeed it was one of the best decisions I made in camp because we infact Won the cultural procession (which was the biggest cup for the cultural day)and came second in cultural food presentation, a win win if you ask me. There was this thing about my platoon. Platoon 7 appeared to be a very unserious platoon, we won’t attend meetings, we won’t wait behind for briefing but somehow we kept wining competitions, we were that platoon that got at least 5/6 wins, might not be first position but first 3 platoon 7 tried to be amongst them. We didn’t win all the competitions but we won many.

Now to the ho-hum activity called social nights, ok let me not sound condensing cause some of the nights were lit asf not going to lie about that but for the most part I was truly upset with it, probably because I was sleep deprived and wanted nothing more than to sleep instead of having loud music bursting my eardrums by that time of the day. Every night was social night, whether you like it or not you’ll go for it and you’ll stay there till it’s 9:40pm and above *sighs*  and to add to how aggravating this whole event was is lights out was by 10pm so let’s assume we close by 9:35pm (they can’t close by 9pm for whatever reasons best known to the damn camp officials )which some times we close later than that we have less than 30mins to get to the hostel, shower and get ready for bed, and where on Gods green earth is that possible, given that this time is the only time we get to relax a bit, do laundry(for those who can’t afford to give the laundry men their clothes),shower, catch up on the days shenanigans (a little gossip and gist to keep body soul and spirit Intact) 

But to make up for these sleep we had a program called SAED (SKILL ACQUISITION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEPARTMENT) which turned out to be a bit of an escape time to sleep your ass off, but don’t get caught else you’ll stand up and who wants to stand up when you can enjoy the luxury of , as my good friend will always say, another name for SAED is siesta. Regardless of the SAED being an avenue for sleep it was a good opportunity to learn new things and acquire skills. For the most part I didn’t sleep during my SAED classes but I slept during the lectures(and for clarification the lectures and SAED classes are not the same).

Food!! Yeah the food in my camp wasn’t bad at all, given the bad things I’ve heard about camp food, I went with the mindset that the food will be trash and me being a very picky eater I prepared for the worst, needless to say I was impressed, although I kept cursing out anytime I ate the Sunday chicken because it wasn’t properly seasoned, I’ll rate the cooking a 6.5/10 which is not so bad. And food rarely got wasted because majority of the corp members actually eats from the kitchen, I guess that says a lot about the food.

Another very wild phenomenon that blew me off is the camp relationships. When I mean relationships I mean romantic relationships, so many people got into relationships, some even broke up and made up, some went ahead to have sex and got decamped, some had multiple but very functional relationships and I was like how do you all juggle this nerve wrecking activities of this camp and relationships!!! Not gonna lie some of these relationships were profitable in the sense that the “Date” spot was the camp market and most persons(including myself) got to eat for free because their partners or prospective partners or friend who has a partner will always come through with the mami market goodies but what can I say! I loved to see it, I love love.

Generally camp was a huge roller coaster of events, at a point I hated it(most of the times I did), sometimes I just found the joke in everything, sometimes I purposely rebelled because why not! but still I can say I hacked my way through camp activities by not always abiding by the rules, that’s where the fun comes in, if you go by the rules it might not be as eventful as you would anticipate. Also I feel I’ve mentioned this point but GO WITH ENOUGH MONEY to camp, it will save you a lot of stress trust me. Our lecture coordinator in camp always say “This is the only gathering you’ll ever see this many cultures, religions and ethnic groups in Nigeria come together and interact as one” and I will say she didn’t lie and I’ve never had Muslim friends all my life but thanks to NYSC I now have them. 

My 2cents on orientation camp is if you are not interested in loosing weight, meeting new people and connecting with new people from different financial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds then I won’t recommend NYSC ORIENTATION CAMP because the stress is not worth it(just saying).

 This is my camp experience, I would love to hear about yours! .