My Experience of Corporal Punishment at NYSC Orientation Camp By - Emmanuel Chika

The fierce northern sun pierced through my scalp and scalded my virgin skin as sweat glided down my body like a heavy downpour. I could feel heat penetrating the sheer veneer of my white shorts at a threatening pace but I didn’t what to give the soldier satisfaction of knowing this so I kept my expression placid and bottled the intense pain.

“Sing before I plog you. You bloody white Powl!!” the soldier threatened in a thick Hausa accent raising his whip at a threatening angle.

I wanted to start a legal ranting on my rights and how my Father would be very displeased with this but I took one look at his stern face augmented by the endless swarm of acne and rough mustache and kept shut.

“Caution is not fear, I just want to live to fight another day” I thought to myself

So I joined the six other National Youth Corp Members being punished like myself in singing the ritual offenders song.

I am a stone o, I am a stone. I am a very stupid stone

I must obey my commander; I must to do what he says

The soldier strutted around victoriously, waving his whip like a task master and glaring at the other corps members as they hurried to the parade. Few of the girls cast sympathetic looks at us while some of the naughty boys who roomed with us in the crowded and notorious block D but were lucky to escape while the soldiers ambushed those of us that refused to heed the warning horn and gather at the parade ground, shouted in mock military voices.

“Double up you Otondos, if you are walking slow and looking at them, you are wrong.”

One of the most notorious of them who was infamous for getting drunk in the afternoons after dressing in casuals and pretending to be a seller so that he could spend the whole day in Mami (the local market), stamped his foot and raised his hands to his head in the typical military fashion and then shouted to the amusement of his friends. “All correct sir.”

I would have found his gimmicks amusing if I wasn’t stuck with my butt on nature’s heater and having one of the most embarrassing moments of my stay in the National orientation camp located in Keffi, Nasaraawa state.

I even caught a glimpse of Ifunaya hurrying to the parade ground and not even her apologetic smile could alleviate my sour feeling.

The soldier snarled at the boys and turned back to us to see if we were in any form of cohorts with them, unfortunately two of the boys who were friends with the rogues found their stunts funny and were laughing in encouragement.

This enraged the soldier as he stamped his foot in red hot anger.

“So I think this is punny hehh, I don’t go to farade and now I sit here in pront op me lauping?” he raged in typical Hausa manner, substituting ‘P’ and ‘F’ interchangeably and using the pronoun ‘I’ in place of ‘You’.

In anger he ordered us to squat and do the frogs jump while singing the offenders song.

I couldn’t take it anymore, my legs hurt and the sun seared on like it was in cohorts with the soldier. When my parents had told me that I would join the compulsory one year youth service in Nigeria after my degree in Cambridge, I’d expected mountain climbing adventures and lots of fun, but never in my wildest most crazy moments did I imagine myself going through this.

NEVER…