Let he who is without sin be the first to cast the stone...

Those words came to me at the NYSC orientation camp which is besieged by long queues for virtually everything you do for those "interesting" twenty-one days. You arrive at the camp on the first day to be welcomed by a long queue due to the search for contraband materials such as electric socket, pressing iron, boiling ring etc. As if the journey from our various destinations wasn't irksome enough, we still had to queue for another form which I think should have been done online with the former registrations. Then came the assignment of hostels and bed space which literally was no issue at all but at least that marked the end of a tiresome journey of the first day on camp.

The second day came after a "very long night rest from 10pm to 4am", which we were supposed to prepare for morning drills with our various platoons and military officials but that isn't the bane of this write-up so as not to prolong issues. At 8am, breakfast was ready which was brought to our notice by the sound of the bugle "hungry man go chop now, hungry man go chop", and then I became frozen by the length of the longest " living being" queue I have ever seen in my entire life but with the intervention of the state coordinator, the queue was broken up into platoons for food sharing.

Then came the icing on the cake, even for the fact that the line became relatively shorter compared to the first one, some impatient corps members who sarcastically posted other corps members to the state walked past the queue looking like a Director General inspecting a parade, down to the server to demand food. The other day, another guy did the same thing and when challenged by a young lady, he claimed she was rude to him and he would slap her and at worst get decamped. I had to ask him if it was worth it and made sure everyone on the queue didn't allow him in.

The other day, President M. Buhari, adopted the change begins with me mantra and most of us started pointing accusing fingers, but truly, change begins with every individual irrespective of your status, and should be a mantra to live by even with an action as little as waiting in line for your turn, (to my too-big-to-stay-on-a-queue-old-corps-members, NYSC already stated that if you are above 30years you can get an exemption letter, please use that as a leeway or respect yourselves, shètígbo sir/ma).

Therefore, before casting the stone on others, lets make sure our hands are clean; in our journey to make Nigeria better, all hands must be on deck and the glory and strength of every nation is in the calibre of youth it breeds as impatience will only get us lacklustre results. Let positive change truly begin with each one of us.
✍
Ogunlana A. Owolabi

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