Graduated, Broke and Invisible
Life After NYSC in a Country That Doesn't Care
You applied for over 100 jobs after NYSC.
Not 100 dreams. Not 100 ideal roles. Just 100 chances to do something — to matter, to earn, to feel like this country hadn’t shown you enough shege to last for a lifetime. You sent CVs with hope, then with strategy, then with desperation. Some days, you sent five. Other days, you just watched movies with your laptop out of exhaustion and burnout.
Nobody replied.
You remember the silence more than anything.Some companies ghosted you after interviews. One even said, “We’ll get back to you,” then posted the job again the next week as if you never existed.
That was the beginning of your education — not the kind they gave you in university, but the one that starts when you realize your country has no place for you.
Farzi - Movie series
The last day of NYSC was a blur. People took selfies with their certificates like it was a golden ticket. You? You went back to the PPA room, stared at the ceiling, and asked yourself, What now?
NYSC ends with a salute and a smile. But it never prepares you for what happens after. The calls stop. The ₦77,000 stops. The structure — however flawed disappears. And you’re left alone, with your degree, your ID card, and an overwhelming sense of failure.
You came home to family members asking, “So what’s the plan now?”
As if there was a plan. As if we all hadn’t seen the news. As if Nigeria had suddenly gotten better.
The Weight of Waiting
You started to feel like a liability around your own family.
Everyone was polite about it — the kind of politeness that stings more than insults. But you could feel it: the side glances, the unspoken questions, the silent judgment that floats around when you're at home too long without an income.
What they didn’t see was the loans you were juggling. The side hustles you were squeezing in — writing content for peanuts, doing social media gigs that paid late or not at all. You were working, just not in the way Nigerians respect. No office, no ID card, no salary. So to them, it looked like you were doing nothing.
And then came the pressure to marry.
You weren’t even earning enough to take care of yourself, but somehow marriage became the next agenda. “You’re not getting younger oh.” “Let babies come before your womb forgets how.”
No one asked how you were surviving. They just wanted a wedding.
When Trying Still Wasn't Enough
There was one job you really wanted.
You’d done the application, the cover letter, everything right.
The interview was scheduled on Google Meet. You had charged your phone overnight. You rehearsed your answers. You even prayed.
Then the network started acting up.
The call dropped once. Twice. Three times. You tried reconnecting, sweating and pacing like a mad woman. Nothing worked. Until you left the house compound — walked outside barefoot and sat close to the gutter, where the signal finally held.
There you were: a university graduate, sitting beside a concrete slab, barely shaded and Lagos sun hammering your skull, trying to sound “put together” to a founder who probably had no idea you were practically in a ditch.
You couldn’t think straight. You couldn’t breathe right. You were disoriented — not just from the heat, but from the pressure to perform excellence in conditions designed for failure.
That day, you didn’t just feel poor.
You felt powerless.
What happened to you isn’t rare. It’s routine.
Every year, Nigeria produces thousands of graduates — sharp, creative, full of ideas — and throws them into a system that barely acknowledges their existence. The NYSC scheme pretends to be a rite of passage, but what waits after is often silence, hunger, and depression.
You’re told to “go to school,” “serve your country,” and “work hard,” but nobody tells you the truth: you are on your own.
There are no systems — just connections.
There’s no roadmap — just survival
Politicians share photos of “empowerment programs” with ₦10,000 handouts like it's a gift. But we don’t need tokenism. We need jobs. We need infrastructure. We need leaders who see young people as more than hashtags during election season.
Instead, what we get are:
40-year-olds applying for entry-level roles.
Bright minds leaving the country to wash plates in the UK.
And somehow, when we break down — when we cry, get angry, or go numb — we’re labeled as lazy or ungrateful.
But how do you remain sane in a country that trains you for a future it has no intention of giving you?
What Do You Call a Place That Raises You Only to Forget You?
Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if the network had held the first time.
If I hadn’t been sweating beside a gutter, trying to sound like I belonged.
If I had gotten the job. If the calls had come. If the system had kept its promise.
But mostly, I wonder what it does to a soul — to hope for so long in a place that keeps proving it doesn't see you.
They say we are the leaders of tomorrow. But what they don't say is that tomorrow may never come — and in the waiting, something in us quietly dies.
So I ask again:
What do you call a country that raises its children only to abandon them?
And what happens when the children stop hoping?
I’ve not gone for NYSC yet but I’ve experienced everything as a fresh graduate. It’s sad that this is the reality we meet after all struggles through school.