INVESTIGATION… 21 Days in NYSC Camps: How Nigeria frustrates its youths, as officials plunder lean resources

Young Nigerian graduates from universities and polytechnics are often excited about the call to serve the nation. Every year, the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) mobilises hundreds of thousands of both locally and foreign-trained graduates for the year-long compulsory national service that begins with a 21-day orientation exercise across the 36 states of the federation, and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Using undercover reporters who traveled to NYSC camps in Gombe and Zamfara and Oyo states, Ripples Nigeria investigated the state of facilities, feeding, and probed how resources meant for the orientation programme were being utilised.

Nightmares! ‘There’s no year we don’t experience this nonsense with NYSC.’

It was a bright Monday afternoon in mid-July. Inside Aniekan Computers, an-ever busy cyber cafe in the capital city of Rivers State, Port Harcourt, graduates from different schools were busy staring at their dashboards via a desktop computer. Many were complaining of the slowness of the website, others shared jokes about how the website didn’t provide a list of the states they would select to be posted to, and some simply stared at the screens of their desktop computers, their faces marked by grave frustration.

Marcus Sunday, (Not real name) a fresh graduate of a university in southern Nigeria, was among those trying to register for mobilisation. Sunday said he experienced nothing short of frustration from the day he began his registration process.

full details: https://www.ripplesnigeria.com/investigation-21-days-nysc-camps-nigeria-frustrates-youths-officials-plunder-lean-resources/