PPA is the acronym for Place of Primary Assignment. The point where you receive your letter to your place is actually the beginning of your service year. The posting letters are given out after the passing out parade on the last day of camp. It is at this point your plans for the next eleven months start trotting the open fields of your mind.

Places of primary assignments range from schools to local government offices, from large multinationals to government parastatals, from small companies to personal companies. Almost anywhere can be a primary assignment. You’d be expected to work your socks off, but never transcend or descend into slavery.

Corps members are expected to report to their duty posts, and commence work ASAP. They must be accepted at these places for duty to commence. In any contrary case, the corps member is re-posted by NYSC. If the corps member has a letter from a company, he/she could be posted there. There’s a deadline for acceptance. So this has to be done a little pronto.

You’ll be required to clear monthly. The clearance indicates you’ve worked for the month and are entitled to the rather meagre stipend from NYSC. It is your boss at your post that will be responsible for issuing this clearance. It is a world of problems if you miss clearance for a month, don’t miss it.

The programme is for eleven months and not a full calendar year. Passing-out is usually about 3 weeks before the one year date expires. To exemplify the latter sentence, if you arrived camp in July 2009, you’d be looking at passing-out in June 2010.