Brother, I Have Some Stories To Tell

In this letter, I talk about serving my fatherland and why it's the worst.

Dread (One)

I feel dread. Like today is my last day on earth. When I tell people I'm more neurotic than most, they don't understand. But this is what it feels like. Like feeling that a horrible disaster is about to happen to you whenever you embark on a strange trip.

The driver says the bus will be a night bus. Given what I know about Nigerian roads, I'm not confident in going on such a trip. It seems like a death trap. Why would I do that? I don't want to parallel park near the Titanics of the road.

The funny thing is this was meant to be a fun newsletter. I hope it ends up being one. I've scheduled it to go out in three weeks. If it continues you'll know that my feelings of dread were for naught, and that I'm more than glad I'm safe. If it doesn't, tell all my crushes that I love them.

When I consider my potential death all of my current problems (money, job, family) don't seem as important. I think we should think about that sometimes. If you're about to die tomorrow, do you think your current headaches would be important? No. I don't think you'll care very much about that big tiddy law student leaving you on read. Or that 35 year old you have a crush on on Instagram. I think you'll care much more about spending the last money in your account so as not to leave the money with the idiots at Guaranty Trust Bank.

(12 hours later)

Oh well, false alarm, I survived. Cool, yes? Fantastic. The driver almost slept off I think, but the head of my mother didn't agree for him. The larger point of this section is that this is how my brain works. As you can imagine, it's not the most pleasurable experience existing in this manner. But one must manage.

Anyway, my higher than normal neuroticism is one of the reasons why I understand a lot of female arguments and attitudes, despite not agreeing with them. I'm surely more given to these mental maladies than the average man, but I'm sure the average woman may be able to relate quite deeply with them. It's a unique position to be in, and allows me to have a very balanced perspective behind how men and women interact. It's the reason why I can disagree but still accurately (this is important) understand the emotions that drive tweets such as this.

Day 1

I hope no other day beats this. I hope this is the worst day of this camp. I arrived at about 6 am in the morning, and since then I've hardly rested. I've been on my feet for the last four hours. I want to say it's the worst day of this year, but it's probably not.

Day 2

It wasn't.

Day 3

I shall no longer be writing in this format because I don't have the time. Instead, I'll be updating this letter on certain themes.

Drinking (and everything else) Alone

I am not a good drinker. Throughout Uni, I only drank at parties and such. And since I only attended maybe three parties in a semester, I didn't drink much at all. Getting drunk is not my idea of a fun time. But ever since I've gotten to this camp, I've acquired a bigger urge to drink. Maybe it's because of how miserable I feel staying here or how annoying everything and everyone is. Every day — or every other day — I arrive at a bar and order one bottle of Smirnoff Ice. It's just 800 naira, and the environment is serene enough that I don't have to talk to anyone. I take my bottle of Smirnoff and then get the needed absentmindedness that I require to go through the “Social Night” in one piece.

The fourth or fifth time I arrive at the bar, I notice that I'm the only one there drinking alone. Everyone has a friend or two. I even begin noticing one guy that's always with one woman outside the bar, drinking Orijin.

I'm always the only person there drinking alone. Of course it doesn't bother me anyhow. I prefer to drink alone anyway. But I only begin to realize that this — drinking alone — is probably not normal. Most people don't do it. And even when they do, it's probably some symptom of a greater malady. You drink with friends, you see. That's the gospel.

But I drank at least a dozen times alone.

Future God Emperor Elewa Does Not Shot Put

My greatest fear when I realized that escaping this place wouldn't be as easy as I expected was the toilet situation. I'm a very finicky person when it comes to my toilet affairs, and I don't even like farting in public. I had a friend who was in the Batch A of this camp and he informed me, in no uncertain terms, that he couldn't use the toilets because of how horrible it was. He said he resorted to shitting in the bush.

Despite my many (for they are many indeed) tribulations in this life, I've never resorted to actually shitting in the bush. Seriously. I've never done it. Even when I attended a public school, I didn't. It seems undignified. I wanted to die of laughter when I tweeted about it and one of my most attractive female friends told me that shot put (as she called it) was very normal to her, and she did it for six years straight. It seemed so ridiculous to me that she was willing to say that out loud. What a scandal!

My plan to attack this situation was to just fast. For the first three days I ate nothing solid and only took a few spoons of rice. I googled the longest time someone has gone without a shit, and I found that there was actually no record (or no useful advise anyway) for such things. I played with the thought of trying to break that record. But I couldn't keep it up for long.

On Sunday afternoon of the first week, I had to do the deed. And I did. The toilet was basically a sink-pit-latrine that you have to squat to use. As I write these words I feel hellish psychological anguish. But I must write them, if I want to read them in 20 years and laugh.

Anyway, it was basically a sink (YES, I MEAN THIS, AN ACTUAL Ceramic SINK YOU MAY USE FOR WASHING HANDS) dug into a hole in the floor. The walls were slimy and the smell, oh my God, the smell. I had to use something for my nose. Anyway, I squatted and did my business. Exiting the place felt so dirty. I felt like I'd just fucked a quadruple amputee with Downs syndrome.

And then I did it like 6 more times. By the sixth time, I was already used to fucking this quadruple amputee with Downs syndrome. In fact, I might have started having feelings for her. I suddenly understood how my friend could have lived that life for six years. Suffering can be addictive.

For the bathing side of things, I had no problem with doing it outside. I often had to wake by 4am, so it was dark enough that I had no fear of women seeing my precious jewels. I also had some memories of bathing outside as a child, so it wasn't so alien to me. Nevertheless, the first day I had my boxers on. It was only until the second day that I had the courage to completely strip to do the deed.

I do have some cause to be thankful, though. Despite its horrific nature, I never met the ceramic sink dirty. I now know that that isn't always the case with the toilets in this place. One morning the camp director spent like 10 minutes talking to the women and telling them to please flush their sinks. No one also had the gall to shit or pee in the hostel I stayed in. One day one of my female friends (the only friend I made here, I'd say), told me that someone peed in their hostel and the cleaners said they packed shit as well. If something like that had happened to me, I may have started saving up for therapy.

How Can you Be An Atheist ?

I didn't sit down with my platoon on this day. Instead, I found a comfortable seat with Seven Platoon. Along the way, I started talking with some fellow who looked a lot like one of my friends who has a ridiculous love for wearing suits. (If you know me in real life you probably already know him). They studied the same course as my friend, and had some very interesting views on women that my friend used to have (used to have, I hope. I've found that wetting your penis regularly changes a lot of things you may think about women).

Anyway, after about thirty minutes of stupid small talk, we arrived, as many of my conversations do, on the subject of God. He asked me whether I was a Christian or Muslim. I told him I was an atheist. At that point, like four people started to pay attention to our conversation. He then asked me how I could live my life without believing in anything. He asked in a very incredulous manner, like he'd just seen a dog with seven heads.

I found that question to be wondrously stupid, and I think people who ask such questions shouldn't be accused of any level of intelligence. It's incredible that some people have never pondered about what one might be if they didn't believe in religion. It's like someone telling you they are blind, and you replying that “how? How can they not see". That's why I think people like that have low IQs.

Aside from that, it's even a generally rude question to ask. When people tell me they are Christians, I don't ask them how. I know how. The mechanics aren't alien to me. But for some reasons people believe it's an okay question to ask atheists. Rude.

Don't You Know Nigerian Average IQ is Fake?

What would I say the average IQ of the residents of this camp is? Who knows. Maybe 80. Maybe 90. Certainly not more than hundred. Which should be disheartening, given the selection effect here. Everyone here has gone through a tertiary institution of some kind, and we know that graduates tend to have higher IQ than most.

But the genre of stupidity here is simply astounding. I've not met a single person I could have any intellectual conversation of any depth with. Maybe that's because I make it a point of duty to keep to myself, but I've overheard many conversations and the quality of thought is piss poor.

Despite keeping to myself, I've found myself in at least two gatherings where fraud boys discussed the benefits of fraud. I've not randomly found myself in a circle where smart people discussed anything of worth. The closest thing I got to useful information here was when one guy informed me that the soldiers who controlled us were probably recruits, not commissioned officers.

But that same guy also told me that “Dangote is one of the small boys in Lagos, and there are bigger men richer than him”.

Here's is a non-exhaustive list of the retarded things I overheard in this camp;.

1. “Ebonyi is the Dubai of Nigeria. If you don't believe me, Google it.”.

2. “Dangote can buy the whole of Lagos. There's no state that Dangote cannot buy". This was said after I informed someone that Ebonyi actually has a GDP lower than Dangote's networth, and he could basically purchase the state if he wanted to. Of course this was said in jest.

3. When I informed this guy that Lagos had a GDP that was ten times larger than Dangote's networth, he told me that Lagos GDP was only so high because they calculated Dangote's networth with it. Refreshing argument, I'd say.

4. Around the same time, someone said that Dangote couldn't buy Lagos because he wasn't even the richest person in Lagos and was basically a boy to other big men in the state. Incredible.

5. One boy told me that all the prophecies in revelations about the end times were coming to pass, and I told him, well, this is the best times we've ever had in human history. He disagreed. He said more people are dying from wars today than every other time in history. Yes, including 1939-1945.

6. Same boy told me that Borno state is in turmoil today because the Western powers know that Californium (which is worth thousands of dollars per gram) is in Bornu. That's why there's Boko Haram in the area.

7. Same boy pronounced DR Congo as Doctor Congo. I don't know if that's so bad, given that I cannot pronounce some words myself (for example genre, rendezvous, and macabre), but it was so funny to me. No, I didn't correct him.

8. During the Social Night, the women who contested for things such as miss NYSC, Miss hot legs, Miss petite, and Miss Ebony, had the most fantastic answers to certain questions. One didn't know the four cardinal points of the NYSC, so instead said North Central, South South, North East, and North West. I chuckled at it, but when I realized that it was overt Yoruba erasure I got a bit angry. Anyway, another girl didn't know who the first citizen of the country is, and replied no idea. When I got back to the hostel we got into a huge argument over who the number two citizen of the country is (one boy said it was Akpabio).

9. In the hostel, one boy started talking about coups and said that the military cannot rule again in Nigeria. Why? He said well, their time has passed. He said even if they gained power, they would just do it to organize quick elections. Why would soldiers risk their lives to gain power just to give it away? Who knows. He said that international pressure from the UN will be too much. Well, I tried my best to tell him how Abacha basically shat on those pressures for five years straight and nothing happened. I don't think he agreed, though.

10. Lastly, one guy told me that in his village there are people who can shit eggs. I said, well, you must realize that they are hoodwinking you. He said no, they aren't and I'm just dumb and naive. He told me to come to his village to see the people doing it. Basically said that a trial will convince me. I wanted to argue that it's biologically impossible for that to happen, and he asked whether or not I believed in jazz. I said, well, no. At that point people who were originally on my side — the side that insisted that human beings couldn't lay eggs — started to drift away. And why wouldn't they? If you believe in jazz ordinarily, why wouldn't you believe that some people can lay eggs? The same goes for Christians, really. If you believe that the sea can part for Moses and his staff, why can't you believe that people can shit eggs? Egg shitting is comparatively trivial to the many wonders that abound in the Bible and the Koran.

Remember, this is a non exhaustive list. There are so many other incredible things that I cannot remember because of my horrible memory. This, and many more, are the reasons why I said that the average IQ of this camp cannot approach 100. But that's not the true tragedy, is it? This camp ought to have a very high average IQ. In other countries, the average IQ of places like this would probably crack 120 or something of the sort. This is roughly the best Nigeria can offer in terms of intelligence, and it's so so devastatingly mediocre. Here's what a friend told me when I told him about my observations.

“This puts Nigeria’s average IQ into more CONCRETE perspective. Many people try to judge claims of Nigeria’s low IQ based on the variety of people they’ve personally met, thus displaying statistical illiteracy in the process. Their personal circle is extremely self-selected to match their IQ.

But in this case, you guys were random corps members who found themselves in the same camp. And what’s worse? This people are not even random enough. In fact, they’re significantly selected too. They’re university graduates. Not representative of the average Nigerian at all, yet they’re THIS DUMB.”

If the selection of tertiary institution graduates is this bad, how about the entire country at large? The best IQ studies we have put Nigerian average IQ somewhere in the 60-76 range. That would mean half of the country is near functionally retarded.

When such stats are posted on online forums, the reflex response from clever Nigerians is that the study is fake or bad or poorly designed. They say don't you know that Nigerian average IQ is fake?

No, I actually don't.

Saheed Osupa

My big opinion about NYSC? Massive waste of time. The country would be better served if it didn't exist at all. But we had a dignitary over who said that NYSC cannot be scrapped because it's already law. I know she meant something deeper, of course.

There are too many interests, too many jobs, and too many contracts associated with the scheme. In plain words, there are too many people making a lot of government money off government inefficiency. These people will always protect their interests. It also helps that NYSC provides cheap labour to poor state governments. In a way the scheme is a win for everyone asides the corps members. That's why it will never be scrapped. Importantly, what political advantage is there to be gained by any president who wants to scrap it? The cost of the scheme is probably a drop in the bucket when compared to other massive money-wasting ventures that the Nigerian state is involved in. No Nigerian president will go through the stress of scrapping it, and Nigerians don't think it's a waste of time either (when it clearly is).

Anyway, at the camp they invite people to teach us skills. These skills are supposed to help us in the future. And what are these skills? Soap making, makeup, “agro-allied”, and even shoe making. We are supposed to learn these skills by attending 4-5 hour classes for like 10 or so days. The classes (at least at my camp) are held under horrible conditions. My own class actually held beneath a tree, and my instructor mostly read from a spiral binded document. 99.9999% of people ended up learning nothing useful.

But that's probably not what the NYSC thinks. You see, we had a SAED exhibition after the classes and every class got to exhibit something. By that measure, the SAED program was successful. It doesn't matter if the students in question will not be able to recreate the exhibition without the supervision of their instructors. People will probably say well, maybe the class was just an introduction class and people can continue learning after camp. Ah, yes. I'm sure that's what they will do.

I do find it amusing that the NYSC thinks that the best thing — or one of the best things— that graduates should do is learn what's essentially handiwork in order to feed themselves. That’s probably why a lot of the lectures referenced what the course officials called “elusive white collar jobs". They believe that graduates cannot get white collar jobs because they don’t exist, and they would be better served learning blue collar skills.

What that means, to me, is that there's really no point for most people to get graduate degrees, since there are no jobs for them to use the degree for anyway. I mean, even when you graduate the government will decide to teach you a trade. They will tell you to learn a skill, and the skill will be manually making soap.

If that's the case, why can't the government just invest in trade schools from the get-go, instead of churning out thousands of useless social sciences, sciences and humanities graduates every year. That seems like a decent solution to that problem. That way, graduates won't have to resort to mixing soaps manually when they come for NYSC camp. They will mix it manually in their universities.

Unfortunately, my solution has the same problem with scrapping the NYSC. There are too many interests, too many jobs, and too many contracts associated with the free or heavily subsidized university education. In plain words, there are too many people making a lot of government money off government inefficiency. These people will always protect their interests. It also helps that the universities provide cheap labour to poor state governments. In a way the tertiary education system is a win for everyone asides the students. I mean, have you ever seen ASUU strike on behalf of the students? Even though they have infinitely worse learning and living conditions? Exactly.

Social Nights In Kabba

You may not believe it, but the worst periods I had to endure were the social nights. It often began at around 7:30, and went on till around 9:30 or 9:45. Those two hours were torturous. So torturous that I had to get drunk just to get through them. You might expect that such events may entertain me and give me some respite from the mental labors of the day, but they didn't. They just made me even more miserable.

The first night had something called a talent hunt. It was this night I realized that I was sharing space with some of the strangest individuals I've ever seen in my life. The stage, setup, and mic was horrible, yet many people joyously stepped up to the podium to show their talent. One guy even rapped. Another boy (who couldn't properly speak Yoruba no less) sang Fuji.

Like. Why. The. Hell. Would. You. Even. Do that? Of course the crowd didn't give two shits about what happened on stage. Other guys came and cracked jokes (which were quite boring — but to be fair to them, tough crowd). Anyway, the whole thing was like the early days of project fame where shit artists auditioned and were laughed at by the judges. The only thing was that I was drunk out of my mind on most days and couldn't even bear to pay attention.

The other agendas on the next nights weren't any better. There was a Mr Macho competition which I genuinely find quite ridiculous. I don't think this because of my stomach. I'm speaking from an objective POV. There were so many competitions and they all tired me endlessly. Every night was torture for poor Elewa.

The worst part of the whole thing was that it often ended really late, and I was usually so sleepy by the time the hostels got opened.

Love in Kabba

At the carnival, someone said, and I translate poorly;

“Someone who has known you for two years can confess love to you and will still break your heart. Now imagine someone you've only known for three weeks”

The person said this in reaction to their friend commenting on the outfit of a beautiful girl who sat in front of them.

Now, I wouldn't say this babe was beautiful. But she was really fair in the non-bleached way, had pale skin, medium height, was slim, and had respectable breasts. This babe was wearing just black tights. No panties, nothing. And a white shirt that she twisted at the end to form a crop top.

In ordinary circumstances, this wouldn't be scandalous dressing. I mean, I've seen worse. But for some reason, this dressing horrified the fellows sitting behind me and they went on to unleash some of the most scathing comments I've ever heard directed at a woman. In low tones, of course. They even greeted her and smiled when she walked past.

One said that she was probably looking for a boyfriend, that's why she was dressed that way. That's when the other one replied with the comment in the quotes. I looked back to see the fellows abusing the girl, and the less I say about their looks the better for me.

Who can guess the genders of these fellows? Oh well.

I don't currently have a girlfriend… well, to the best of my knowledge anyway. Despite that, none of the women in this place interested me romantically. Honestly, it just didn't occur to me that one might even want to speak to them. For one, most were relocating. Many didn't come from Lagos, and many weren't relocating to Lagos.

Secondly, it is impossible to have sex in that place.

Caveat; the day before I left, someone told me that he'd done the deed with a girl here. He said he spoke to one of the boys at Mami to show him where they slept — because it appears some of them do sleep at the place — for a small fee, and the boy did. He then took his new beau to the place and had sex with her. At the time I thought the boy was lying, but since I didn't care enough about him, his opinion, or his lies to contest it, I said nothing. My mind was on other things. However, new incidents that happened on the day we left the camp has change my mind. I now think that boy might have been telling the truth.

Therefore, it seemed like a waste of effort for me to go after anyone romantically. Importantly, I was too miserable to do even that. I spent every waking day waiting for the next day to continue its slow march past me. I couldn't focus any of my mental energy on a woman. I was far too depressed by the entire thing.

But this wasn't true for many men. Within the first week, many people had partnered up. I even began seeing couples around. One boy sleeping next to my bunk even got himself a babe who gave him her food. Others even took their babes — or babes they were wooing — to eat and paid for the food.

I didn't have any such problems. I had all my meals alone. Such is life. I remember my friend telling me not to fall in love at this camp. If I stayed here another ten years, I would become a monk. Who has time for love when your senses are constantly assaulted by the memories of fucking a quadruple amputee with Downs syndrome.

Nigerian Incompetence

For the last 7 or so years, I've modelled my perspective on the Nigerian government around gross incompetence and inefficiency. I'm not like those guys who say that the country's main problem is corruption, and that once corruption is gone we'll suddenly find ourselves in El Dorado. There are many adults — many of them quite accomplished in their fields — who still orient their criticism of the government based on this substructure.

Therefore, I was quite surprised to find that the NYSC officials weren't totally incompetent. The logistics of running a camp like this must be very complex, but somehow — with very little in terms of funding — they managed to make it work. Or at least look like it was working. I don't think I could have done better if I'd been in their position, and I pride myself on being rather competent.

So what’s the problem if they are so competent? Well, there are two problems really. First is that they are competently doing rubbish. Like I said, the entire scheme is a waste of time. Thus their efforts — while certainly well intentioned — is analogous to the effort put into cooking a stone.

The officials are promptly up at 4:30 and spend the entire day working to keep the camp running. One woman, the sanitation officer, is especially hardworking. Everyday she works really hard at keeping the camp clean. But like I said, it’s like the effort put into boiling a stone. It’s like they are running a thousand miles per hour in the wrong direction.

Secondly, despite their competence, corruption is endemic. I don’t want to write about the many tales of corruption I heard of and indeed witnessed here — maybe I’ll update this newsletter once I’m done with the service year and sufficiently removed from this situation that my opinion wouldn’t matter (not to say that it matters right now).

The point is that there was the normal flavor of Nigerian level corruption here. In a way, the camp wasn’t an anomaly in this sense. It’s the sort of corruption you expect from your average Nigerian civil servant. Perhaps one shouldn’t give them too much stick on that account. What surprised me the most about it was how corruption and competence lived together in the same camp — often in the same person. It was especially shocking that the same officials who warned us about corrupt acts earned a good livelihood from it.

Like Michelle Obama of blessed memory would say, this is Nigeria and whatever you see you have to take it.

Dread, Part Two

I won't say the first thing I'll do when I get home here, but I believe some of you — that I've spoken to in private — already know of it. I won't say it here because I've recently realized this Substack, despite my best efforts, isn't a safe space for all my nonsense shitposting. Too many people I like (and perhaps too many people who like me) read these letters. Since I have an image to maintain, I can't dry all my horrible linens here.

The dread I described at the beginning of this letter is coming over me again. I feel it now, and I fear I'll feel it even more strongly on the day I leave this place. If what I fear happens, and you see this letter, just laugh. It was what it was.

Oh well, I survived. But barely. We got to Lagos around 1 am. We were so late because our bus broke down and we actually had to switch buses. The situation was so bad that we had to sleep in the park. Just four of us boys. But then I posted this picture on Twitter, and someone offered to pay for an hotel room. Afterwards we got into a car and got to the hotel. And then I had the best sleep I've had in weeks.

Oh, before I forget. The governor gave us 20k each. On account of that, I've come to the sober conclusion that governor Yahyah Bello is the best governor in Nigeria. If you disagree, that's your headache.

That's the end of my story.

Some news; I've finally reached the 500th subscriber on this Substack. I think that's not half-bad. To celebrate, I'll be posting a link to an opinion poll. I'm always trying to make my Substack poastings better, so I'd love if you go through it and answer the questions if you can. Also remember to smash the like and subscribe buttons. Good-bye.

There's no quote for this newsletter.