As a Nigerian, when you graduate from the university under 30, whether you studied at home or abroad, you’ll have to do a one-year program called National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
I studied abroad (Bangkok, Thailand) and completed my B.Sc. in 2017, and then went on with my Master’s and completed that in 2019. I was not lucky to land a job as 2020 was the Covid year. I have since been self-employed as a freelance consultant and crypto trader.
I returned to Nigeria in 2020 following the covid pandemic, and the NYSC program was halted for a duration of one year. In March 2021, I enrolled to be enlisted, but with each posting, I wasn’t getting called up, and so I asked a lot of people for guidance and by August, I knew what to do, or I thought I did.
The next time the listing was getting published, I found the instruction for foreign students, and in October, I took a trip to another city 5 hours away from where I resided, to get physically verified. When that was done, I was then waiting, prepared for my own call-up and it never came. By this time, I was visibly worried and decided to do what I do best, RESEARCH. Further research showed I needed to “get evaluated” and found it was my university’s accreditation letter that would do that, again, or so I thought.
I reached out to my alma mater and acquired true copies from their office and proceeded to travel to the NYSC headquarters located in the Capital, Abuja. This trip would take 16 hours by road for $30 and 1 hour by air for $80. For comfort, I flew.
I decided I’ll make the trip a business/leisure trip as I have a handful of high schoolmates living there. My next post will explain the leisure part.
When I arrived, I proceeded to visit the HQ, or what I thought it was and was redirected to another location 5mins away. I went through 5 checkpoints, signing and gaining access, before making my way to the office to submit the documents that’ll help my case. I met an elderly man who was kind to listen to me and proceeded to check my status, he confirmed I wasn’t evaluated but stated that it wasn’t as a result of accreditation.
At this point, I was tired, I pondered if going for the service was even worth the stress because I moved past getting employed and saw no need to engage it.
What he told me next was shocking to me, I almost threw a tantrum. He said my certificate was never uploaded and if I hadn’t made that trip, I wouldn’t have known because whoever attended to my documents in March, didn’t upload my certificate.
The painful part, the main purpose of my trip that cost me $155 flight fare could’ve been sorted with a $5 phone call if they picked their calls.
