NYSC Registration (Part V)
This will address the eNYSC Scratch Cards. The NYSC set up an online scam scheme to aid prospective corps members with pre-registering for the orientation exercise (also known as ‘camp’).
To take advantage of this, the registrant would need to have received his/her call-up letter, take a trip to any nYSC State Secretariat or Afribank branch and purchase (at least) one eNYSC scratch card.
Let’s take a quick look at the informational flyer:
Take note, especially, of the line towards the bottom that reads: “PLEASE NOTE THAT THERE WOULD BE NO MANUAL REGISTRATION AT THE ORIENTATION CAMP.”, and understand that this is, quite literally, a bold-faced untruth.
As with many noble, but doomed-to-fail ventures, there appear to have been some good intentions behind offering online pre-registration:
- Eliminating the god-awful registration lines
- Giving corps members the opportunity to indicate their shoe and clothing size (for their NYSC kits, not for gifts . . . sadly)
Before you go on about how I’m not cutting them enough slack, consider this:
Otondos receive their call-up letters less than a week before the resumption of the orientation camp exercise.
If you read the Otondo Guide to NYSC Registration, you might recall that all correspondence was recorded by hand (yup . . . in 2010!). So, considering the ‘electric’ pace at which things get done in such departments, it would be laughable to think that the list of all registered Otondo corps members and their details would magically find its way into some online database in such a short time span.
‘Fine, then’, I hear you cry, ‘Nigerian-trained graduates make up the bukl of the corps member body. Since their appointments are released months in advance, surely, the online pre-registration program must be useful to them . . . the majority, no?
Mmmmmh . . . NOPE! Everyone that came to take part in the three-week camp exercise had to stand in said god-awful lines, receive boots and uniforms that were not even remotely their size (“GO AND EXCHANGE AMONG YOURSELVES AND DON’T WORRY US, JARE. ARE WE MACHINE? CAN WE KNOW WHICH SHOE WILL SIZE EVERY ALL OF YOU HERE?”) and so forth.
To summarize, only get the eNYSC scratch card if you:
1. Like taking trips to banks for no apparent good reason
2. Have N 250 in coins and you simply cannot bear their weight any longer
