Our Abuja Drama aka NYSC Registration

Registration for NYSC:

Students that attend Nigerian Universities have all registered for NYSC, because they did it in school. So for International Students that studied abroad, we all had to go to Abuja to register.

I’d never been to Abuja, heard it's clean, neat, expensive, etc. They forgot to tell me it is extremely conservative, and in a state of anger or  maybe tears you’ll can call it beyond backwards. Well unless you’re dressed in a hijab you’ll probably be fine.

So there’s a list on the website on possible dates to register for the 3 or four batches that go on a year. I went with my girl Carmen to Abuja. Tickets were interesting bout N32K or N52k (N16K =$100) round trip. You have to take a huge list of documents from secondary school exams WAEC, NECA, kinda like taking your SAT scores, college transcripts, college diploma etc.

Tip: don’t go the last week, go a month before time if possible so you only have to spend 1-2 hours. Make necessary amount of copies of your documents (or important listed sections like “date of last entry into country”), Dress like you’re going to work. Make sure you have everything on the list from the official NYSC website because it changes.

Here’s a pdf of the list my batch c 2011 had to have for foreign trained students. (click for larger size)

THE DRAMA:

So after our flight, we had arranged to have a “car hire” to take us to the NYSC office, about 1hr away from the airport. We get there, and these men at the gate and one lady start yelling at us, and screaming, then one guy pushed us. They said how can we be dressed like this. They refused to tell us what was wrong with our outfits, and told us to leave and come back when we were dressed appropriately. My dress was fully covered, not tight, no cleavage, yet they yelled, apparently the length was bad. Carmen on the other hand apparently her blonde hair didn’t help but nothing to do about it, they probably also got upset by her half tattoo sleeve, and she had on a playsuit with the back open.

Decided to take a retake a picture of my exact "whorish outfit" that i wore , and as you can see it proves how i have little home training. *eye roll* and should be ashamed of myself.  Took it few minutes ago.

I guess it's short, but next time they should say there's a dress code, I dont think all the insult was necessary.

The full outfit.

 Dress gift from Nels that i got by Charlie Jade, Shoes flats that I need to freaking replace by Tory Burch (they've seem much better days). Hmmm I'm not sure bout the lipstick, in the picture it makes my lips look bigger.

I did hit the gym today. Day 1 again

I swear if we weren’t together after being attacked by about 7 yelling people insulting us we would have cried. One psycho man was passing by and saw us and kept yelling and calling us prostitutes, and yelling how could we leave the house dressed like that. It was insane!!!!!!!!  We saw my father that morning in our outfits, we saw carmen’s uncle in our outfits, we flew in our outfits, and no one batted a lash. I NEVER knew place in Nigeria was that backwards, it reminded me of going to the freaking village, but this is the Federal Capital!!  I wanted to yell back at the horrible man, but Carmen was like i need to shut it before they stone us *OMG wtf!! Twilight zone!!* They made us go stand away from the building and wait for our car to return, while everyone stared and snickered.

Luckily we had friends in the city. I changed into jeans, and a men’s long sleeve shirt & Carmen ended up with a long dress, and a BLAZER in the freaking heat! Poor girl because she needed to cover the back of the dress because it was open. Don’t forget she didn’t have to register, she was just accompanying me. She was visiting from England. The whole experience put her off, hopefully she’ll still try and register next yr. SOmeone should have warned me, so now I'm warning you!! especially if you live outside Abuja, it might be a wasted trip if you are not dressed appropriately. They sent someone for having a rumpled shirt! c'mon!! there's barely electricity.

PS: Bumped into my little sister's friend who basically dealt with the same and had to adjust her outfit.

I went cookoo insulting Abuja and calling it backwards on my bbm. Horrible experience. Friends kept telling me Abuja isn’t that bad, conservative yeah, lots of women in hijabs everywhere: yeah, very muslim: yeah…. But it’s a nice city and supposedly those guys are an outlier, especially since a lot of people treat corpers like shit. The workers inside the building were quite nice I'll have to admit, and some say the security is being extreme because they just got a new Director General that month. We had a bit of fun in the city with friend, left the next day back to lagos. When we got back to my state we were soooooo happy to see people dressed like us, no stares, no awkwardness of feeling like a whore or being called one, because we weren’t dressed like nuns.

I hope not to move to Abuja, but….. I might, I’ll try not to, but if it’s in relation to a great job prospect, I will have to “woman up!” and pack my stuff to Abuja and hope there isn't a a huge disparity in how women and men are treated there.