NYSC Orientation Camp: Everything You Need Know This 2023

NYSC Orientation Camp can sometimes be stressful or even exciting. Most prospective youth corpers often go unprepared to the NYSC camp without proper information on how and what to expect there.

Well, if you have received your mobilization letter or awaiting your own, this information about how NYSC Orientation Camp activities look like and what you would need for registration and what to expect there is for you.

Before I proceed, I would to let your all know that NYSC is a one year compulsory service that every graduate must undergo before you can get a private, public or military job (senior officers). The orientation camp is a 21 days program that ushers you into the service proper.

Documents You Would Need At The Orientation Camp

As a corp member, there are some documents you would need to take along with you to the state where you are being posted.

This documents include:

1. Your student ID Card (original and photocopies).

2. Certificate /statement of results from your school (original with 6 photocopies).

3. NYSC call-up letter (original and 6 photocopies)

4. Recent passport photograph

5. Compulsory medical certificate from a government or military hospital showing health status.

Arriving the camp with the above listed documents and items will get you through your registration at the orientation camp to the point where you will collect your mattress and your NYSC Kit.

Honestly, the registration process is quite tedious and hectic especially when you don’t have the right documents at hand or even know what to do.

ALSO READ: NYSC ALLAWEE FOR ALL STATES

To make things easier for yourself, always ask questions. At the entrance of the camp gate, be prepared to be searched thoroughly by the security officers which comprises of the police, civil defense officers, army and MOD.

Whatever luggage you would carry will be inspected at the gate. This is to ensure that weapons or items harmful to other individuals such as electric irons, forks, knives and more will be removed for security reasons.

Items Given At The Camp

After registration, there are some items you would be given at the camp. Items like buckets are not part of what they would give you there. We have listed the items you are to collect below:

• NYSC kits consisting of 2 round neck loosely fitted white T-shirts
• 2 pair of white shorts
• One NYSC crested vest
• A pair of NYSC khaki (Jacket, Belt and trousers)
• A crested NYSC cap,
• A pair of Jungle boots,
• A pair of NYSC white tennis shoes.

These items are what you would wear throughout your stay. Guard them jealously by writing your initials on them with marker is advised. This is because, someone can steal it without your notice.

Activities at the NYSC Camp

Throughout your stay in the NYSC camp, you are meant to wake up as early as 4:00a.m. to get prepared. Corps members are meant to be on the parade ground by 4:30a.m. Prayers are said at the parade ground, little bit of parade chants and marching before breakfast at 7am.

The food being served at the camp is nothing to write home about. If you can’t manage it, you buy from the mami market. Food like tea and bread, jollof-rice, beans are what is being served at the orientation camp. The

Fortunately, there are different entrepreneurship trainings that go on in camp and corps members are mandated to be part of one or two of them.

Interestingly, nearly every activity in the NYSC orientation camp is a competition with a prize to win or a score to rise to, having divided corps members into platoons and owning to the fact that one of the platoons will emerge the best at the end of the 21 days in camp.

Competitions ranging from sports, cooking, sanitation, parade marching, drama, dance, beauty pageant. These activities are fun and will give you the opportunity to participate in the one you deem fit.

Typically, there would be weird little tales to keep you and your friends amazed and thundering with laughter. Soldier-corper love affairs that you will definitely hear about, married men and women who take off their wedding rings to have fun, corpers who sleep with officials in a bid to get posted to a good place of primary assignment which they may never get.

ALSO READ: Best States For NYSC 2023

Camp fire night is the climax of NYSC camp. It’s the almighty social night when you realise the camp wasn’t bad after all. You will also realize how much you are going to miss your new friends. Some lavish their first allowance of N19,800 (N30, 000 is being considered after minimum wage was increased) that night.

Regardless, life starts after NYSC orientation camp. When you get posted to your Place of Primary Assignment (PPA) some will be posted in town, while others in village, some in schools, companies, ministries or commissions, and some will be rejected.

Some won’t be given accommodation, some wouldn’t be paid by their employers. Either way, corps members ought to obey the clarion call, under the rain or in the sun. Simply pray to get a good working environment and working conditions.

ALSO READ: Procedures for redeployment and how to write NYSC redeployment letter

One thing most corpers do not know is that being posted to the capital of some states has its own disadvantages. The chief of which is that the cost of living there is very expensive. So, be content with whatever place you are given. You can also redeploy if you don’t like the state you are being posted to.