DAY 1
The N-word

Is the moon different in Niger? First time I saw it in niger, it was before six in the evening and it was already full and round. I ask forgiveness if I expected it to be different. But in what way? It is still the same orb of silver I see everyday in almost any place.

The N-word makes it all different.
First I got the call-up for Niger and wondered, where on earth is it? Actually, it was—where is Niger on the map of Nigeria? The most I got was that it was IBB’s home state—if having perhaps the largest state linked with the most maradonic of past presidents made any difference.
My second thought was actually a disappointment. Strangely, I expected to be thrown farther than the belt in the middle—maybe some outlandish place like Sokoto or Borno, and I could switch places with Gladys Ichifitanure or Lawrence Isaiah. No.
Departure for Niger was filled with dread and anticipation.
Dread: what would camp be like? How many hoops would sardonic military trainers march me through? Who could survive?
Anticipation: camp was an approximation of life on some exotic Caribbean beach that doubled as destination for sex tourism. Camp would be fun, games, sweat, sex, booze—all the sins and vice a soul could bear before death—crammed into 21 days of depravity.
That pull of sin is strong. That’s why it was easy to stare through the bus window at the countless hills and boulders, at a landscape that looked like someone had sprayed pebbles as big as houses all over the place and you simply had to bu9ild your house on them. Isn’t that the rockiest foundation!
It was eye-opening in ways both good and bad. I haven’t seen much of the denizens and it seems there are more southerners than I can count northerners, even though Shari’a operates here.
Perhaps it is different in Niger, and maybe the moon has to be different too.

DAY 2
“My name is Brother Brown. And you are?”
the young man asked the question with the most open smile I had seen in the eight hours it took to get to Paiko. I had overcome my dread, and the last three-minute walk to get to the camp was a coup of sorts. So I responded, half thinking he was out to obtain me.
He turned out to be a fellowship recruiter, actually a music director with Redeemed. The other two men with him were colleagues.
“What’s the thing you need most?” another man, who I later was told was the president of the fellowship, asked. He was called Papa Wale: papa for president, wale for his first name.
I thought he expected my answer to be inevitably “Jesus,” and said nothing.
“Mercy,” he continued, answering his own question. “Mercy is what you need.”
It was kind of good to come into camp a day earlier. That way you could register faster once the camp opened officially. With opening yet to happen, many would be stranded. Not every one of us who came a day before was sure to get registered early, however, and the accommodation slots were so few many were left homeless virtually.
Redeemed has a family house, they told me, and anyone was welcome to stay there regardless of Christian denomination. And they promised, should I go with them, to convey from the family house in Minna, a 15-minute drive from Paiko, to the camp next morning so I could register early.
It was a blessing. The worst thing that could happen to anyone in a foreign land is to be stranded, with no place to lay your head while lugging your luggage about.
They had the same message for every new arrival they could get. They ignored—even laughed—at those newcomers with a strong overweening sense of independence who simply zoomed by as if they knew any better.
One camp official offered us newcomers temporary accommodation in exchange for our call-up letter, which we could get back in the morning.
We took him up and forgot the fellowship, which settled for later comers.
Once we settled down, the issue of security came up and we had to find a way to beat theft till morning. We’re still trying and looking over our shoulder. No hope whatsoever.

DAY 3
On Tuesday 5 September 2006 registration was hell. I stood from 7am to 1am and couldn’t register. Because I wanted to be first to register on Wednesday morning. I set alarm for 3.30am and woke up promptly. But so did at least a hundred others. The hall filled with a seething mass of desperate bodies queuing up for registration.
A few minutes before it commenced, soldiers came in and chased everyone out. It was unbelievable. Usually only uniformed corpers who’d through with registration should be mustered for drills. Seeing them squirm through the rigours of rising early and marching through the early-morning mist was supposed to be vengeance against them for successful registration while others stayed all night and slept in open classrooms and in open air.
However, the stupid soldiers ordered all and everyone out on parade.
Public relations officer Binta Shaibu made a few comments, taught the NYSC anthem and made the mistake of using the word “retire.” The word was taken literally, the civilians we were. She’d actually said, “when you retire…” and we didn’t hear the rest. We took off, all racing to get back to the registration hall first. It took four soldiers armed with 3-feet poles to send us back to the parade ground.
We hesitantly joined the morning jog—and found it both distasteful and exciting. Once the jog was over we ran back to the hall for registration and continued standing on queues. There were more people willing to cheat and jump queues than there were people willing to organise it.
Hours later I got to the front of six lines for registration.
Check in. Collect counterfoil. Check documents. Registration by state and discipline. Check filled-in forms. Collect ID and publications. Pick up kit. Reclaim luggage. Register for hostel accommodation.
I went for evening drill, queued up for dinner, took a bath and slept once in a long time.

DAY 4
The 21-day camp was one time I thought Nigeria could be at its most secular, where tribal and religious lines would dissolve and all graduates would be brats who’d make the lives of camp official and physical trainers hell; that God and humanity would be forgotten and any time spared from military drills would be used for fun, games, fooling around and hurried quickies all over the place.
Wrong.
You can’t know how shocking it was to wake up for drills at 4am on Wednesday 6 September to rain. We fretted at going out in the rain, half praying the soldiers would forget the drills.
Oh, no, the bugle sounded and we marched out in white shorts, shoes, socks and tee-shirts, looking like old pot-bellied cricket players.
I got the shocker on the parade ground. We mustered into platoons in three files and began singing and clapping and praying. It was shocking, to say the least. It lasted for nearly half an hour, then the Shuaibu lady came and demanded more prayers—Christian and Muslim, according to the camp timetable. The Christian prayer warrior got the reassuring support of everyone, the Muslim got scanty, scattered responses to his lilting Arabic.
The jogging began spiritedly. The first jog was a flop. This, the second for me, led by Sergeant Ayuba aka Airborne—or Counterforce, as he sometimes called himself—leader of 4 Platoon, was great. He was anticipated, though. Every crazy song he led got resounding refrains in chorus.
If you smoke, Abacha government no go worry you.
Dem don tire, dem don tire. Lazy corper, dem don tire.
See monkey…worwor.
Adamma adamma adamma.
Chop akara dey go, moi-moi no dey.
There was more clapping and loud stomping than actual jogging accompanying the songs.
Airborne is Calabar but speaks intense Hausa, and even looks it, so that when he mentioned being Calabar I had to look at him twice to make sure he wasn’t kidding.
“I am a military trainer,” he said to make it clear why he needed utmost cooperation from 4 Platoon. “I train soldiers who are not ready for combat, not civilian corpers who are less than paramilitary.” One girl who speaks hausa, wears a veil and manages to look Yoruba (actually her mother was) called us semi-soldiers.
“When I hit a soldier, I feel hardness. And that spurs me,” Airborne went on. “But if I hit you [meaning civvy corper] I feel soft, and I don’t like it. Hardness makes me happy.”
He really took on physical training with gusto. Once the PT was over and we got back from jogging, he commenced warming-down exercises, as he expertly called them, to restore stretched muscles and stop them from tearing. Many were dangerously close to experiencing that firsthand.
PT for nearly 2000 lazy grumbling corpers was no picnic, but each platoon was as ready to outdo the others as were the platoon commanders happy to see their platoon was better and exciting rivalry into the others.
From the front a-jogging begins/from the back a-marching begins/front the left a-jogging begins/from the right a marching begins.
Jogging no be punishment. Na our normal training.
No one knew how prophetic those lines really were then.

DAY 5
Camp Orientation Day is a day all corpers look forward to. It is more like a second matriculation that only happens once in a lifetime. The governor of Niger was coming and we’d for four days been rehearsing a march parade, salutation and stuff—morning and evening.
As instructed, we were on the parade ground at 8 sharp. Of course, the officials didn’t show up until two hours later. Gov Abdulkhadir Kure didn’t shot up. It turns out Niger is like a village chiefdom with retired generals, notably IBB, at its head. No public event is attended without due approval, even when it is deemed fit. So Kure sent a commissioner from his state cabinet and the commissioner in turn sent his permanent secretary.
Then things began and should have gone smoothly once the swearing-in was concluded, though some conveniently left out the part of the oath that said something about “paying the supreme sacrifice for the Fatherland and shunning bribery and corruption.”
But students will always be student, bloody civilians that they are. Many, once they decided they had tired of standing, squatted, uncaring that the governor’s party was still there.
The salute and three happy cheers for the governor were passable at best. Hip, hip, hip, and 2000 voices—more like 1700 to be exact were supposed to chorus hurray. Some substituted hurray with Kure, others put in “oleh”—pidgin for thief. The RSM (regiment sergeant major) said later that we disgraced him before his superior, referring to the camp commandant whom we also contrived to disgrace before the dignitaries present.
Captain Nurudeen Olalekan Sadeequ decided to lay down the law. We were commanded to sit on the grass in our immaculate paramilitary green-and-white NYSC-crested T-shirts. The captain barked “worship the ground,” and the RSM turned interpreter of army jargon to corpers commanded us to “stand on your heads”, then press-up.
And of course the bloody civilian ex-students were still rocking with peals of laughter and grumbling complaints. The drilling punishment went on luntil some sobre-minded, failing to see the mirth in standing on their heads, began to take the punishment to heart and shun their childish colleagues into cooperation.
With my arse poking in the air while my head anchored my body to the ground, I muttered, “Who send me go school?” and two girls beside me rocked with a seizure of giggles as uncontrollable as mine.
There was something striking about this captain that reminded me of Badmus and james, and made me want to base a plot on him. At least, a sane, rational, logical yet fantastic part of my mind—maybe it was the writer inside seeking another adventure—realised that. He looked cool as every newly commissioned captain just back from peacekeeping mission in Liberia ought to, and yet firm and totally in control. If he smiled, you went home with him. It was that enthralling. That was before he said he actually killed with the same face with which he smiled. One girl from UNICAL (Ruth Echa Ani was her name and she got wed midway through service to an army captain classmate of the infamous commandant, both of who had served under UNIMIL even though they didn’t know one another) whose father was in the army, explained to me how officers rose through the ranks from NDA—with its university-like 5-year programme—and the 9-month short-service for graduates who majored in professional courses and incidentally rose through the ranks faster.
We’d always convinced ourselves we’d dropped studentship and were officially corpers. The captain totally stripped us of everything human.
“From this moment on,” he said, “you will be addressed as cockroaches, slippers, wombats, or any other name the officers deem fit.”
“On no account should I grab you wearing anything other than the kit you have been provided.
“The field is a holy ground. I know many of you came here for sex. (Got that right!) If I grab you any where near this field …” He let the threat hang over our heads half spoken and more minatory that way. “I don’t make threat. Ask my men. I am not known for issuing threats.”
I think he intended us to deduce the obvious: that he didn’t issue threats he didn’t carry out. He had the habit of adding the clause if I grab you—if I grab your soul, and then letting the threat hang in the air unspoken. When we retired to our lodgings after each bruising session with him, we vengefully and mirthfully called him If-I-Grab-You behind his back.
“Several paths have been designated for your use. On no account must you use a path not designated for your use. If I grab your soul…”
“The mammy market closes at ten, I gather. Lights Out is ten-thirty. If I find you anywere near that mammy market at ten…
“From time to time I will be conduction impromptu parades. If you fail to attend any for any reason whatsoever and I grab you…
“For those of you who think you have balls—if I grab you. I don’t think there are hermaphrodites among you but some of you ladies think you have balls—if I grab you, I will squeeze your balls, those balls you think you have got.”
He had another intimidating habit. While he addressed the cockroaches he constantly paced in-between the lines.
“For those of you hide away in fellowship as a way of staying away from parades, know this: God has powers, but I have the power of God at my fingertips and I will not hesitate to use it. Hiding at fellowships when you are supposed to be on parade ground means you are in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I grab you…”

DAY 6
There wasn’t supposed to be PT on Saturday. Or so Airborne said. But the bugle sounded nonetheless. We trooped out onto the field like prisoners. Stragglers were frog-jumped.
Offenders guilty of offences ranging from wearing the wrong outfit to strolling to parade got “rolled”—which meant sitting, if you were lucky otherwise actually rolling, as the word said, in wastewater gurgling as thick as sewage from the camp kitchen. It didn’t matter if you had your whites on. In fact, the whiter your whites, you better a candidate you were for it once you ran afoul of Camp Regulations According to Sadeequ. You simply had to obey the commandant and then come out looking filthier than a sewer rat and so unspeakably fragrant you were the butt of general laughter. Of course, everyone sympathised with you later and prayed never to step in the shoes you’d just vacated. But it took a good deal of wise-arse bargaining and a hefty payment to the launderers to get clean again.
The commandant rolled someone today. No one was sure what he did except that his dressing wasn’t complete. The guy had on his white tee-shirt and khaki trousers and the commandant commanded him to roll in wastewater from the cooking areas of the eating houses in the mammy market.
There wasn’t much to do but stand and sing and jog, and the time made my feet ache inside my uncomfortably tight boots. They felt like they were going soft as pears packed in a tight haversack. And to think I’d have to have those boots on all day. The reprieve was only momentary: the few precious seconds that elapsed in changing from the white PT boots to the sturdy-soled canvass-instep ochre jungle. Simply, it was only a swap of one hell for another.
DAY 7
You’d never have though Muslims were ardent proselytisers. But drive from Abuja to Minna and you get a sense of intense proselytising and religious symbolism even along the highway.
Along the highway, at specific intervals, are white metal boards of four by three feet, each with carefully painted Arabic script.
Allah.
Allahu akbar.
La ilah illa Allahu.
The slogans flash by with a certain concealed intensity as you speed by. You don’t exactly see them as much as feel their subliminal impact etched onto your retina and brain.
Because Niger is a Shari’a state, it was to be expected. But not as road signs. But if that was a brand of proselytising, Shari’a or no Shari’a, the Christians did it one better. They easily made three-quarters of the camp residents.
Before drills every morning, the parade ground reverberated with loud Amens, Halleluyahs and Jesus, Pentecostal-style, echoing across the field of Abubakar Dada Senior Secondary School, which doubled as the camp, and at some distance bouncing off the hills surrounding Paiko. A lead charismatic picked a point of prayer and asked the crowd to pray. Everyone did the ardent supplication at once. The babble could only be silenced by the lead calling hoarsely “In Jesus’ name,” getting an equally raucous chorus of “Amen” before moving on to the next prayer point.
An uninitiated could think they’d wandered onto a field packed full with Pentecostal crusaders invoking the Holy Spirit.
Catholics and Anglicans ostensibly aren’t accustomed to praying in this fashion and I wonder they made of it. In not being given to intense Bible punching and Greek ranting, they had something in common with Muslims. The time used for prayers was disproportionate. The Christians took up nearly an hour, sometimes more; the Muslims’ murmuring in Arabic of few indistinct words lasted only minutes.
When Christians prayed the parade ground was reverently silent—except when the hour-mark was reached. When Muslims prayed, the parade could afford a modicum of reverence mixed not with snide remarks but with unintelligible murmurs that did more to insult sensibilities because of its forced unintelligibility.
The NYSC is a federal paramilitary outfit in a confessedly secular country. Yet you can have marathon praying sessions on military parade ground and fellowships sprouting all over the training-and-orientation camp. That leaves a lot to be explained about this country’s brand of secularism.
DAY 8
Ever since I read I Air Force Cadet I’ve wanted to join the military, in particular the Navy. Not as a lifetime career choice thing but on basis of a short-service enlistment that would last a few years so I could graduate just like Ola in the book and go on with additional experience.
Perhaps my greatest motivation was to get behind the curtain of secrecy that enshrouds military life. There was something exciting about that kind of life. When Sydney went for orientation camp in his time in March 2006 and sent home a barrage of text messages complaining about the rigours of regimental life, I thought he was crazy. It was no use whining on sms. What did he expect of military trainers? Not much, it seems. For me, it was particularly difficult because I wanted to diary my experiences at camp. Camp had no time to spare for thinking-and-writing processes, no moment to jot down even the simplest thoughts.
At 0330 we were awake and dressed in whites like cricket players, expecting the bugle with bated breaths at 0400 for parade. The parade itself lasted till 0700 when we broke up for bath and breakfast. The next parade was at 0900. We, about two thousand of us, spent the hours 0700 and 0900 queuing up for food.
Second set of parade, and the drills lasted till 1. then we broke up for lunch. Lunch was at 1300 but came at 1400 or 1430, and at 1530 the bugle was sounded for the next parade at 1600. You had to wash up before lunch and sometimes the bugle came before you could even get the food let alone eat it.
The third parade lasted till 1900, time for dinner, which you got at 2030 or 2100. Lights Out at 2230, but half an hour before that anybody found in the mammy market had the camp commandant to deal with.
There was allotted time for everything. And once the bugle sounded for a parade or some other activity, you just had to switch into mode for the latest activity. Everything else had to stop; nothing else dared matter. Even if afternoon meals actually began at 1400 instead of one hour earlier, the bugle for parade at 1530 meant you had to march, food or no food.
Now, it is sort of enjoyable. But there are times when I feel caged and can’t wait for the camp to end so I can do my stuff in the larger Niger society.
I guess the most annoying thing about regimental life is the routine—and for a civilian student, being told what, when, where and how was an insufferable irritation.
On Monday afternoon, the lunch alarm came at 1503. One guy was still trying to sleep the muster for parade sounded at 1545. The sleep-deprived young man flew into heights of drama more dramatic than the three witches in Macbeth.
“These bastards! I was just trying to sleep. I have been lying here and sleep hasn’t come. Fuck the military!”
The bugle sounded again to remind us it was time to hotfoot it.
“Shut up,” he screamed in frustration at the bugle blower who was making his life miserable at the moment. “Get lost! I don’t want to hear it.”
Later when he calmed down, he said if he’d known camp would be this hellish he’d have deferred his service and kept on deferring it until he was out of the country.
An Igbo guy dissolved into a paroxysm of complaints. He said it was frustrating because his camp activities had absolutely nothing in common with his discipline at university. The camp had confused his entire plans. He’d lost weight so much his parents couldn’t recognise him if they saw him. He couldn’t sleep. And the worst part that “scatters his brains”, he ranted, was the lack of sleep, since he was afraid to sleep for fear of being caught off guard by the bugle.
That which scatters his brains is the brain behind the design of the camp outfit. In the morning at 0400 when it is cold, we have to dress in short-sleeved tee-shirt and shorts; and in the afternoon, when it is sweltering hot, we have to put on khaki trousers and long-sleeved jackets the captain calls uniform.
DAY 9
Sule Ayuba once said blacks had cheating wired into their genotype. He was a military officer; he was our platoon commander and we were but corpers. Yet, he warned us, he would cheat if he had the opportunity. It was a chance, a call for extra caution.
He should have said students had quadruple DNA strands for cheating. They never seem to do enough of it. There was no dearth of people ready to lie, cajole and do anything to jump queues for registration, screening, payment, even and especially food.
Sometimes they always got in faster with their goals simply because they anticipated no fellow corper would do something as uncool as brushing them off. Anyone on queue would understand, the buddy-buddies they were, and cheats exploited the buddy-buddy feeling.
It was flagrant, considering a line of the NYSC oath that made reference to shunning corruption and bribery. One person answered that he’d stricken that line from his oath and quipped, “OYO”—on your own.

DAY 10
Airborne wasn’t the first person to say Nigeria had great plans on paper that failed at implementation.
Take Shari’a. Niger is a Shari’a state. I haven’t investigated in-depth the evidence to support that superficially, but it is apparent that there are more southerners visible than there are northerners. Or, if you took the region to represent faith, more Christians than Muslims.
The government seems to be reckoning without a youth paramilitary programme like that of the NYSC, where men would have to stand next to women in hijab on queues, where women hawk food to men in such close proximity and wear no head covering.
Are you sitting for this? There are cleaners employed to clean men’s bathrooms in the dormitories on a daily round while the men bath nude, as you can probably guess, in the shower stalls. These cleaners are all women. And just for full measure, on one edge of the camp is a spot (curious?) for green and dark bottles with liquid whose labels say contain 13 per cent alcohol by volume. And on Sundays, while fellowships go on, cars zoom into park to pick up the ladies, the guys have their phone memory cards full of porn. And dorm talk is the bawdiest you ever lived with.

DAY 11
Competitions began in the first week of camp. We presented a pantomime called Nigeria and its Many Problems or Water Don Pass Garri on the first Saturday night.
There were countless contests on camp. Miss NYSC, Miss Coca-Cola, Hot Legs, Bold and Beautiful, Mr Macho, Drinking Contest, Ayo Contest, soccer, drama, dancing, volleyball, cooking, quiz.
Platoon 4 (Ayuba calls it 4 Platoon, military-style; we call it Platoon 4, civvy-style—or Plantain 4 or Banana 4) began choosing contestants and arranging for future contests right after the drama went off on the first Saturday night.
Ruth volunteered to wax the pageant contestants’ legs, probably till they shone like a baby’s round bottom or the skinny pins of some olive-skinned thing of beauty soaking up the sun on some South Pacific island beach. One girl said she would teach them catwalking. Davies the drama director with a finger in every pie said he’d teach carriage and use of vocabulary. After all, the platoon’s potential entry for the Miss Coca-Cola contest although blessed with a complexion as ebony black as the liquid in a Coke bottle is cursed with a thick Igbo-accented tongue. As is the favour cat-eyed Miss NYSC when she speaks pidgin. Even though they looked like possible knock-them-dead contestants, the drama director had immense problems with their English tainted by their mother tongue.
Ruth, the girl with an army father, said she’d design and sew the costume to cut costs. I volunteered to sew if she’d do the cutting. That was perhaps the first time I would allow myself be drawn into platoon business. The second time I surprised myself by volunteering assistance for the cooking competition.
Then one bulky girl who constantly reminded me of Njide, my late and favourite cousin, said she’d enter the beer-drinking contest.

DAY 12
A drizzle next Monday morning would have put a damper on things, but didn’t. The jogging didn’t hold. When we came for HIV/AIDS seminar at 0900, it became warm and then gradually so unbearably hot that no one listened to the talk on voluntary counselling, testing and HIV/AIDS prevention anymore. We were roasting inside our khaki jackets and trousers in the sun. The drama presentation at the seminar fell on deaf ears and blind eyes.
Only the demonstration on condom use caught our attention. Everyone wanted to see with some prurient anxiety the latex slipping over a life-size wooden penis. The lewd comments about the penile model made it appear larger than life. The demo had barely started, the lubricant-impregnated rubber covering the friction-free smooth wooden penis when all began demanding their own condoms.
The demo people said we could get the CDs, that’s slang for the prophylactic latex, from the camp clinic later. That night we thronged the clinic for our compact discs.
By evening, a drizzle at 1600 broke up the afternoon parade and sent us scampering away, and we were quite happy to do just that.

DAY 13
On Tuesday I bet we wanted a repeat drizzle to send us back to our beds in the camp hostel. The drizzle came, lulled, then became a cloudburst.
There was no sign of going back. We jogged in it. We drilled in it for hours until we began to love it and fell all warm and aglow inside. A thin rainbow suddenly appeared and made everywhere look so much the colour of sparkling champagne someone said the Rapture was upon us.
We were cold when we finally broke. We rushed out of our wet clothes, bathed, put on dry khaki clothes that felt blessedly warm all of a sudden and lined up for tea so watery we needed to buy extra sugar and milk to make it drinkable to taste. But the warmth of the tea was welcome even though it came an hour late so that we chewed the bread on our way to drills at 0900.
We reported for man-o-war drills but gave up the time for Platoon 3, which had failed to complete theirs the day before due to downpour.
The soccer tournament commenced today. We would play on Friday.
Nigeria is a country where abandoned projects begin to take shape once a bigwig is scheduled to visit. On Wednesday there was no jogging but we did an impromptu cleanup in preparation for the DG’s visit. A lot of bigwigs came today, including topdogs from CBN, UBA, Union Bank, Diamond Bank and a guy who swore his textbook would help us pass job interviews of any kind at any company.
Before we joined the seminar of job provision in the sun, we did our man-o-war activities. Balancing Logs, Tunnel, Return-and-Gain or Swing-and-Gain, Spike Crawl, Wall, then a Mother Wall.
On a normal day, I should have scaled the little wall easily, but after having gone through six obstacles before the wall seemed too high or my limbs too weak.
Others were reserved for later: Jacob’s Ladder, Postman Walk, Scramble Net, Junior Tarzan, Burma Bridge, Tension Rope.

DAY 14
Tuesday at 2300, the tattoo parade signal sounded without a warning. The bugle had us all hissing and cursing and grumbling like old creaky automobiles. The bugle shocked me. I’d slept at 2000 and thought the bugle was the normal at 0400. But the phone alarm I’d set for 0345 hadn’t gone off. I thought my battery was dead. Others thought, more adventurously, that they either were dreaming or the dormitory was afire. We were still thinking and hissing when the soldiers began pounding on walls and doors like Nazi soldiers routing suspects out of the comfort of their homes in the dead of night.
There were highpoints, even in such distressing moment. Someone moaned, fearfully then but later vindictively, that it was like a robbery was going on. A girl chose those few twilight seconds snoozing and alertness to realise how bad it was to “rush” people from sleep: they could have heart attacks, she said. Another girl said she’d left her phone on her bed. Many came out in their nighties and slippers, and Udoye said the soldiers were rushing into the female hostels knowing full well what state of undress the girls would be in just to see “free breasts. Make them thank their God say them no see me. If them see me, I go talk o!”
The tattoo was for roll call, since some corpers couldn’t be accounted for. Guys got it firmly planted in their heads that the missing corpers had to be girls who’d gone with strange men to spend the night for paise. Runs girls, they tagged them, not the first time.
We returned to bed at 0100 and woke up promptly at 0400 for morning parade, roundly cursing the camp commandant. A few conspiracies to make his life hell were already bandying around walking-talking pairs by daybreak. It had been done on other camps where revolts succeeded and people would wonder why corpers revolted against a particular commandant. The conclusion would invariable be that he was one wicked, cruel son of a bitch.
The plotters thought platoon leaders should pull more clout with fellow corpers. I told them in passing even without knowing who they were (they were walking ahead of me and I had to pass them by anyway) that that was a no-brainer. They said nothing.
Anyhow the revolt had to be well orchestrated. A rebel voice would suddenly, when told to “ground arse” say, “Wetin sef,” and the revolt would ripple through the crowd, helped along by strategically planted rebels—and the next thing it would be corpers versus soldiers, an uneven match in number. And Sadeequ would be out of the camp.
Others were more willing to entertain amorous fantasies. On the night of the tattoo, a guy said boys skipping camp would be decamped, never girls. Girls knew where to touch the captain and even the formidable no-smiles camp commandant would be reduced to a whimpering, simpering, prattling baby all heated up with sexual passion. “Abi, them tell you say commandant no dey fuck?” the proponent asked brazenly. “Commandant na man. E get dick. Girls na devil” was the conclusion.
Someone opined later that morning that the commandant was being unyieldingly firm for some ulterior reason. If he ventured to tell a girl, the gist went, “come and see me,” that CHOSEN girl would go running at the double and spreading her legs wide open “as if them don work am keep,” a guy said. Translation: readymade. And what girl in her right senses, the general picture suggested, would dare refuse such a formidable man?
Once during cleanup one day, he walked on by and girls ogled his departing back—backside, rather. “God try for e body sha,” a girl remarked, a remark that became a for-girls-only chorus tinged with oohs and aahs.
Ayuba challenged the girls in his platoon: “Shebi una like the commandant, ba?” What answer did they chorus? Something like God had created the commandant on the best day of the week. No one knew what day it was for sure. Even boys were unnerved at the sight of his bare grabbing biceps of his upper arms.

DAY 15
Volleyball and soccer held today. We lost the volleyball game. Soccer was a losing battle right from go: 3-1 silenced me. After a pep talk and glucose binge, water and chewing-gum, it became 3-2, then 3-3, then moved on to penalty. The shouting, the chanting, the drumming, the mascotting, all were deafening.
Other contests seemed to be falling apart. Loudmouths were getting to our shoo-ins for Miss NYSC (which was later replaced with Miss Glo), Coca-Cola, Bold and Beautiful, Hot Legs. The loudmouths were trying to field their own personally favoured candidates to get in good with them. Rather, for the male loudmouths pushing forward female acquaintances, to get in good and hard into their flowery, satiny, silky pants.
All the initial contestants we’d been banking on began pulling out. And the boys didn’t want to relent on the bitching campaign, as though they could suddenly don boobs and catwalk on stage.
The girls were stupid to fall for the smear campaign and refuse to stand. Not that guys don’t know a thing about pretty girls and pageants, but girls don’t push their own ideas onto the male soccer team. So why didn’t the guys leave the girls well alone to their skinny legs and bikini business?
We won the soccer match and went wild, chanting. Ayuba! Ayuba! Ayuba! All the way across the field to the hostel. We shouldered him into the air.

DAY 16
Organising our entry for the cultural dance contest was a bitch of task. I suddenly became a timekeeper, which wasn’t too bad. I would ensure the dancers kept to the practised 8 minutes. The Efik lead singer was supposed to watch me for the countdown I would signal at 2-minute intervals. We arranged it that way.
We also arranged to meet at 1900 for a final rehearsal before the event at 2000. The turn-up was crazy. First, the rendezvous point was changed minutes to the meeting time and the drummers who’d been practising refused to show up. New drummers were picked and taught to make up a beat to match the rhythm of the Efik folksongs. A minute to appearing onstage we were still screaming and rushing around, getting our discarded shoes, slippers and shirts into safe keeping (in my care, that is), getting a singlet for one of the male dancers, taking the drummers blindly through the four song sequences. It was so hectic my head could have fallen off for the migraine pounding me silly.
Once Platoon 4 was called onstage we had no option but to go, prepared or not. Bashir, the platoon leader, made a thirty-second introduction that fell in with the allotted ten minutes. Ruth led the dancers out onto the stage. In a single file, their green wrap-around skirts and white blouses of cheddar were uniform, as was the sway of hips and busts. Lead singer and another Calabar who earlier promised to watch for my timing became so engrossed with the singing and dancing they forgot my humble timekeeper self existed. From somewhere in the wings, I tried to get their attention by screaming. They never even looked back up until the moment my voice went hoarse. Doris, the platoon’s representative on the socials committee, came around backstage to observe that the dancers were packed too close to the back of the stage. I had to somehow let them know the watching, rowdy audience and judges thought they were afraid to move to the front of the stage, or at least occupy the centre. My screams fell on deaf, singing, dancing ears.
Eight minutes wound up. Ruth, when the rest of the troupe had exited the stage, explained the origin of the dance for the benefit of the judges, since the crowd wasn’t really interested in such genetic material. Then she came offstage dancing and twirling her body in the serpentine, sultry way that only her Efik tribespeople are known for.
Judging by the resounding applause, it was a success. We came fifth in the tournament. Translation: we had to re-costume (with more flamboyance and at more expense), recoup, retrain and come for the finals. It was a plus even though we’d lost the drama qualifier.
At the end of the show, I grew heads at the applause and lost the hoarseness in my throat for some time. My voice was a gravelly croak. It was a success considering the dancing troupe was an ill-sorted bunch of unserious individuals whom you couldn’t keep focused on one routine for any length of time.
The success was both infectious and contagious. Even the issue of missing slippers, as we later discovered, couldn’t dampen it. But I doubted I wanted to go through the arse-busting rigours anytime soon.

DAY 17
It’s not easy cooking for people, especially if they never bothered to appreciate how much you work your fingers to the bone: the two thousand thankless bodies that each platoon had to cook for in turns. Platoon 4 had to do so on Friday. Again the bunch picked to do the chore on the platoon’s behalf was ill sorted and there were more people more interested in stirring a pot of boiling soup while posing for the camera, video and still, than actually working. None of the grime and soot to ruin that special Kodak moment.
The smoke billowing from the six, seven fireplaces was thick, black. The flames had to be kept roaring. It was hard bone-baring work, which made me appreciate what the kitchen staff of women had to do everyday all day for the 21 days of camp.
Breakfast was ready on time—six 40-tonne iron tripod pots into which we dumped 800grammes (two cans) of Cowbell each and an equal amount of powdered milk to go with 1300—we counted!—bread loaves.
Lunch was a basinful of okra made into soup in a 50-tonne pot to go with four bags of yam flour made into amala in those six 40-tonne pots filled with water.
For dinner—rice—an equal number of pots and seven big bowls of tomatoes ground to fill the 50-tonne pot. The work was back breaking, as was keeping the fire going. We did it so well and soon it was the women’s turn to admire the hard work involved in keeping the fire raging under the cooking pots. Yet I praised the women and their work the more. Next time I queue for food, I silently promised myself, I will not diss the dish or make snide comments about delays or taste or quality. I vowed unqualified acceptance of whatever the women spooned into my food flask.

DAY 18
The scene is breathtaking. On top of the rock, the entire earth falls back into a vista of green. Sitting on the rocks feels like sitting on the highest point on earth and Niger rolling before you becomes your world, your footstool and you the king.
On the right is greenery broken only by a dark tarred road fingering through the green like a snake. The green is a verdant ring of grassland. Few round-topped trees dot the landscape like mushrooms or broccolis. A phone network mast is incongruous in the middle.
The scene throws backward into a range of mountains more like huge stones God left in Niger. Leftward it flows into a closer mountain and continues in unbroken green and mushroom trees and verdant green rug. (Several roads, earth and tarred, wind through the landscape. There are two more phone masts.) It continues all the mind-blowing way to the extreme left.
In the foreground hundreds of the village’s square-shaped houses and a water tower squat at the base of the mountain.
From the bottom upward, lemon grass, grasses and legumes blossoming with wild flowers carpet the side of the mountain and grow almost over the smaller rocks all over the surface.
On top the sky meshes with the green vegetation in the distance.
People are praying, singing, buying and selling on the mountaintop. Business is brisk; sellers tacked at least N10 on the price of everything. Calls are going out to relatives and friends, cameras are clicking like mad. All traders at mammy market came ahead of us.
And people are zonking out. Soldiers have to take their unwieldy packages of unconscious inconveniences down the mountain on their backs or shoulders on Red Cross stretchers.
It is amazing. A few people pleaded sick and stayed away from mountaineering and we thought we were brave to be going on it, but flaking out wasn’t part of the deal. And seeing the local children surefootedly scaling the mountain like a bunch of mountain goats makes the weakness of the unfortunate corper more agonizing.
We’d began the ascent very earlier before the sun’s rays warmed the mountainside and lifted the dew from the night before. We were still on top when the sun came up and, being close to the sun made us feel hotter and swelling. It took hours for the long chain of hand-linked humans to get down, but we felt we’d conquered the mountain. After that only a few the following mornings would still look at it at assembly—sorry, at parade.
Getting down was the hardest part. We’d gone up steep faces of the mountain using a rope secured to a rock. No one knew only a stone securely held us from plunging back down to our deaths at the base of the mountain until. We found that only when we got closer to the peak.
We took another route, supposedly of less resistance, on the way down the sheer side the mountain, stepping gingerly on clumps of stones, hands linked in a human chain. It was hairy. I would have felt easier if I had both my hands free and to myself, but the confinement in my opinion made descent hazardous. If I crashed for any unfathomable reason I would fall into the guy ahead and send him tumbling into the guy in front of him. The domino effect I would set up would maintain its momentum and have each one of us concertinaing down the sheer face of the mountain until one body wedged us and stopped us reducing to shattered bones and bloody pulp.
That happened only in my dark imagination. But one guy did fall, though. He was zonked. He dashed his head against rock and fell bleeding. In his inebriation, he said soldiers were silly for allowing alcohol sellers up the mount. Girls drank but neither got drunk nor fell. a conclusion was on every lip: the guy was stupider than the soldiers for exceeding his intoxication limit. Earlier on parade before ascent, he’d been caught with a glass and bottle of gin by the camp commandant.

DAY 19
Bold & Beautiful contest was a row. The hall had never been packed more full. Everyone shouted invectives and slurs and encourage, depending on their mood, as each girl made her entrance. The chants changed with each girl.
A B C D E F G H … I. This referred to a girl so slender she looked like the letter I.
Over age, over size. For a girl on the plump side. Read: gross.
You too dey. For a girl they considered phat.
Mummy de-de, oyoyo. For a girl they considered subtly nubile and obviously more fit for a mother than a pageant, especially if she was big.
The entry score music also changed with each contestant, and changed the mood of the crowded audience. The voices were chorusing the song African Queen more than the DJ was playing it. African China would have died for the reception.
This guy gave jokes so dry the crowd couldn’t wait to boo him off the stage. That moment came when a group of four girls came on to present a riff on Rihana’s Baby, come share my world. Why not? The quartet of females had on slinky black trousers, thin white blouses that outlined all natural and enhanced curves. They knotted the lower hem of the blouse high above their navels, baring a swathe of swarthy skin, glittering enticingly in the dark and fuelling the raging testosterone. They did things with their enhanced anatomy. The hip swaying and bucking and twisting, Rihana style, were all calculated to titillate.
The contestant girls gave eye-opening answers. One didn’t know the full meaning of NACA. Another said Tony Blair—or was it Nelson Mandela? Even that part is unclear—was secretary-general of the UN. (Don’t know how Kofi Annan swallowed that.)
The girl from Platoon 4 weighed in second runner-up and somehow that was enough for my, for us. But I am wondering whether both girls who wanted to stand for Platoon 4 were both named Ruth.

DAY 20
All hell broke loose on the morning of September 22. We were told about night inspection that would involve us dressing up our bed for the soldiers to inspect. Only it didn’t turn out that way.
At 0200 most were yet to sleep. Others had only just slept off when the rouse began. We marched out, panicked, after the RSM’s initially entered (though an apologetic one) to tell us to clean up.
Sadeequ demanded a thorough clean-up of our surroundings, a cleaning roster, roll-call of all corpers in the dorm and a waste bin to be situated to one side of the dorm door, all of which he’d be back to inspect, especially the cleaning, in half an hour.
“Permission to carry on, sir?” asked the hostel leader.
He granted it and left.
Clean-up began and was completed in a huff. Then things turned sour. First, Anfal the hostel leader, said to contribute money for a dustbin. Some agreed, more refused. Someone said it wasn’t our place to buy waste bin or even any form of clean-up, that money had been provided by the federal government for all of the camp’s administration.
It was only unfortunate that the politically adept smooth-talking GPC Nwokoro, the state coordinator, and his cohorts had eaten up everything. Angel said we were graduates who’d spent aluta-ised years at university and should be able to stand for our rights and ourselves.
Everyone was shouting at the top of their voice, espousing reason to not be treated like babies, resentful of being woken up at 0200 for something as droll as a cleanup, resentful that a camp administration was only inflicting the cleanup as punishment after Minister for Intergovernmental affairs, youths and sports, Dr Grace Ogbuche, lambasted the camp authorities.
Rationalisations were all over the place. In minutes the camp was like a university campus spoiling for Aluta. Everyone was spoiling for mass action.
It began on the score of seemingly brutal military drills, everything Capt Sadeequ had ever donee.
We confronted and corralled him, drowning out his once militant voice as he tried to speak reason. He wouldn’t climb onto a higher pavement to address us; if he did that, he would expose himself to stoning. Better to stay in the heart of the seething crowd. So he remained in the middle of the crowd, at the same level so if some hotheads at the back of the mob threw stones the coolheads close to him would be pelted as well.
His once commanding voice was hoarse. When he eventually began to speak, he began with “Gentlemen and ladies” not “clowns.” The shouting and jeering silenced him.
He couldn’t leave for his safety with the entire camp rowdy. The rowdy bunch however began to split into factions, some against, some for. But after an hour of screaming and jeering nothing meaningful had been said. The good levelheads favoured constructive talk; the bad roughheads said Sadeequ had nothing to say that they wanted to hear.
Sanding and stoning and watering began. But then he’d pulled away and we—the good group that didn’t want him lynched that night—hived off along with him, while he laboriously explained the Nigerian factor, the disparity between on-paper and on-the-ground realities, the politics of corruption (or the corruption of politics) and gift money [the minister’s hundred-grand gift] the essence of bugle timing, the instilling of military training and discipline, the indispensability of name calling in military circles. During his training, he said, they were called worse names—addressed even by the given name of their mothers. Think of would-be military officers going by names like Mabel and Cynthia.
Some reasoned along with him. Not all understood that a military camp was supposed to be just what the name says—timed, regimented and intentionally designed to be uncomfortable.
He called us clowns, he explained, not derogatorily but because we made him laugh, exactly what the name suggested. At that statement, a fresh aluta erupted, all screaming for his head. And while he explained in that circle of bodies, he looked pitiable, human. I pitied him. We even shepherded him away to save him from being lynched. He’d never been to a university, he explained later when he came to be interviewed at OBS. That’s why he seemed lost in the aluta crowd. And his only mission in Liberia with the UN, keeping peace and working with refugees, hadn’t prepared him for an alutaised mob.
Everything military and mysterious about him was stripped off like a veneer, demystified and humbled. He lost the soldierliness that had kept him impregnable.
Before that, it took time for us to understand he wasn’t responsible for our welfar. Actually none but one of the grievances made out to the coordinator concerned the commandant.
Camp administration by night denied knowledge but claimed responsibility by morning. Sadeequ was gone, it seemed. With all the clamouring all night, what could have been expected and what more could have pacified the mob? Nwokoro had written to the Brigade Headquarters that he wanted Sadeequ out. by this time we were still seething and so incensed that we did an about-turn and screamed that he himself had to go. He almost had a heart attack standing right there before us, uncomprehending. It became we-want-Sadeequ all over the place. With the captain’s senior officers from the barracks right there while we screamed for him like a demented bunch, it is uncertain what they thought but the clamour must have hyped their estimation of him.
Everyone should have known he was a shy guy. Ruth said he actually about-turned girls and spoke to their backs to avoid looking them in the eye. He never made eye contact.
He confessed to being a shy guy but he preyed on that very weakness in others because it made him feel more in control.
The self-effacing expose was just too much for any military officer, I felt ashamed for him. Especially when I heard, or thought I heard, tears in his voice and saw it in his eyes as the coerpers overwhelmed him that night.
I guess shouldering him in front of his seniors who’d come to relieve him of his duties and for damage control salvaged his career reputation, which had temporarily plunged and instantaneously being tarnished in the eyes of the brigade top brass.
He said he wasn’t happy with his present duty in the army. He was a physicist who wanted to make things. He had this mantra; “At the end of the day, the only thing you have is what’s upstairs, in your head.” He wanted to make things with his hands. In the armies of advanced countries, like the US, he said, the greatest advances in science and technology begins in military labs before filtering down into civilian use. He was disillusioned. He weas changed to the man who was everywhere and with everyone.
We said we would declare Sep 22 Corpers’ Day, sort of like Independence Day. Ours was the third camp nationwide to stay a revolt and a formidable Batch B. the victory got to our heads. We boasted about how we could uninstall and reinstate any commandant.
After that the camp became a campus. No soldier shoppted you, no grabbing, no frogjump, no carrying. Everyone did as they pleased. Bugles sounded and hours after the hour people were still strolling out leisurely. Mufti was all over the place. Of course, trust us to abuse freedom like we seemed to believe Sadeequ had abused power himself. He came one of us—and on thing was clear: we loved him. His human side wowed many into stupidity and sentimentality and girls brimmed with sympathy and puppy love.
I just don’t like the feel of the camp anymore.
Deji had been going on and on about camp and service and trekking, but his last message said he’d had enough. I wonder what that meant.

DAY 21
Endurance trek held on Saturday 23 September. The moon had been sited in Saudi Arabia and muslims were to stay behind on camp as well as the sick and the weak.
The trek became a jog. We jogged the first phase of the distance to an unknown destination. It took 2 hours and 2 minutes. We broke, rested, ate, drank.
The second phase stretched longer but was shorter timed. We practically raced through in one hour, pushing the man-o-war and soldiers into running and forcing everyone else in the long file of humans to run. Which was treacherous. The terrain was unfamiliar—we jumped into the air to leap over water puddles before we even saw the marshy ground ahead of us; we squished through marshes, waded through water, peeled through tight bush with arms stretched skyward above our heads.
Soldiers couldn’t stop us anymore. The last few minutes as the camp swung into sight were a riot. We raced, panting. We loved it. To think, only yesterday we’d stubbornly, childishly declined to go on the trek.

DAY 22
On Thursday we went for the dance finals and came fourth from a previous fifth position.
The next night, Micah appeared for Mr Macho. It was a hormonal thing. Young hunky men baring their all and all and making girls shriek and squirm in their seats while guys passed lewd comments and bawdy remarks. He made one highlight: ripping his shirt off his body on stage. But he came seventh.
Chidimma finally got over the dirty comments she’d been getting in the badmouth campaign, finally making up her mind to represent the platoon. She contested for Miss Coca-Cola and, despite being darker than coke, came eighth.
Bashir Bello, the platoon leader, was under pressure—fire, really—to give account of platoon expenditure and balance accounts. There are some expenses Ayuba made that Bash didn’t understand, he said, and couldn’t explain it to a platoon set to tear him apart. And it would be bad—for him, that is, for going through the agitation—if he didn’t touch a cent of the money. Actually, the money wasn’t even in his charge.
“Wallahi, I am afraid,” he told Ruth and I the night before he was to open up the books.
I sympathised with him. Leadership isn’t easy, especially with the kind of people we are—civilian students, now corpers who think university confers a right never to be cheated at anything.

DAY 23
You couldn’t imagine the sort of places the endurance trek took us through. Forests so thick I could see a potential hero/heroine character streaking through like some real-life Guyver pursued by a bunch of military grunts desperate to put several bullets through him. it was ripe jungle for a war story. Hillsides so scenic they were unbelievable. Brooks you could cross in one pace. In some places you couldn’t walk without your legs brushing against bush.
The natives we ran into along the trek path were friendly with a dash of piquant, unquestioningly curiosity. They took seconds off sitting outside their tiny huts, working their farms and washing their clothes in the little brooks meandering across the rocky land to say Sannunku all the way. Yaya yau. Barka da rana.
The huts were round as the innuits of the Eskimos, round as dwellings of old, made of sun-dried thatched reeds, a parabolic hole for entrance in front and a door fashioned by tying dried reeds together. Only one entrance led inside. Above the door was a high little window only big enough to hold a six-year old mischievous brat bent on climbing out it. The hut was scarcely 7feet high and the door was half that height. You had to bend at the waist to get in the doorway. If you sat on your haunches, the top of the doorway just about touched your head.

DAY 24
Miss Glo contest came up on Saturday night, almost the last social event on camp. There were very high stakes from the start. Reason; the sponsorship was by Globacom and Equatorial Trust Bank. And it turned out to be a quiz contest instead—four rounds of questioning. Girls entering pageants expect to be questioned somewhat and many will do their part to make certain they don’t come across on stage as beauty without brains. But four rounds of questions were over the top. If the girls know they were coming out for a quiz, a comedian said, no thought of mind-blowing prize would have made them enter the contest.
Either the scoring was based less on the answers the girls gave or Platoon 4 was compensated. If the judges scored on the bases of composure, confidence, knock-them-dead appearance, then platoon 4 could have won. The girl contesting on our behalf had all that and one more. She’d been modelling and knew enough runway and catwalk tricks to remind me of Toni Coldsweat.
The dispute began when only the first and second positions remained for grabs and Platoon 4 was still standing. When the second was mentioned and it was obvious Platoon 4 was going home with the bacon, shouts of “Ojoro” rent the air. Everyone was screaming that she didn’t deserve it, and it came as a surprise even to us her platoon members. After all she failed to give reply to the full meaning of NEEDS and the colour of the camp pickup truck. But it was our first and only first position in any contest and we erupted into jubilation, hugging and snapping photos and dancing, and the new Miss Glo acted like a real beauty queen. She hugged very daintily, fanning herself with her fingers, rushing for a Fanta while everyone gave her some air before she really decided to be a true pageant winner and faint.

DAY 25
Now I understand why Bash was afraid of the audit. Everyone was screaming blue murder and Bash had to cautiously, almost reluctantly, mention each item on the list while waiting to be pounched upon. He was prone to taking offence when asked to repeat a certain item. There was this annoying guy who came after everything had almost concluded and said it was null and void because he, his royal majesty his nibs, hadn’t been there. He’d warned he couldn’t make it that day, that the audit should have been held the next day so he could attend and that he must be on the committee for Campfire Night.
All platoons were at war over their finances. There was just a lot of embezzlement that people couldn’t stomach: cooked figures, trumped-up expenses and ridiculous prices—N400 pair of shoes, N10,000 recharge card for calls, N5000 for each pageant contestant. Wonder what those embezzlers will do in office if less than 100 grand in 21 days touched them off to show their true colours.
It is difficult to believe the same people screaming and bawling lewd comments at Miss Glo on Saturday night as the contestants filed out would be enraptured with the gospel the next morning.
First they bathed, dressed to kill, struggled for food on queue and zoomed into service to praise God. And the enthralment was utter. A pin could have been heard dropping to the floor. The hush was total as bawdy minds listened raptly to the gospel.
Amazing how quickly people can change. Everyone’s got some mercury in them.