The Director General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu during a media chat on Tuesday at the NOA Agodi office in Ibadan with journalists gave a full insight on the vision of the Ministry for the Country in 2024. This activity marked one of his many programs arranged for the one-day visit to Oyo State.
Mallam Issa-Onilu explains the purpose of his visit to Ibadan which centered on a working visit to meet the Olubadan, the agency staff and particularly a visit to the site of the Bodija explosion to clearly see the extent of the damage done to the affected areas.
In the media chat, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu identified the plan of the agency in 2024 to educate Nigerians towards positive attitude, patriotism and mobilize towards national development.
More importantly, the DG NOA shed light on the importance attached to building core values for every Nigerian citizens which led the agency inline with the Minister of Information plans to implement a new national initiative tagged – National Value Charter or National Lifestyle Charter, bearing in mind the demography of our country that has a population of 72% below the age of 35.
“Building core values for every Nigerian citizens is the primary target for the Ministry of Information and NOA. This led the ministry to implement a new national initiative tagged ‘National Value Charter’ or ‘National Lifestyle Charter'”.
“These value system will serve as Pan Political Action that are sacrosanct for core citizens with two major components as the Nigerian Promise and Citizen Codes, whom both have seven pillars each and they both constitute the National Charter that the president will soon to unveil
“Needless to say, the campaign will be driven with jingles, adverts, social media campaigns to truly define the Nigerian values and goals in our social system from the primary school to secondary school and down to the tertiary institutions.”
Mallam Issa-Onilu further unwrapped the aim of the initiative which is channeled to deliberately produce Nigerians with ethical instruments of socialization like the voluntary clubs with a target to establish 37,000 citizens brigades in the country.
“In the same vein, the agency plans to establish about 37,000 Citizen Brigades in the country, 1,000 Brigades per States including the FCT, Abuja. They will form the early adopters of the value charters to create new models for our children up till secondary school.
According to the NOA boss, the project will also include launching of Mobile Application on iOS and Playstore to interact with youths in the technology industry to make entries for Cartoon characters with government support to create world class characters to promote our local heroes like Herbert Ogunde.
“This will help to reduce consumption of foreign content and thus reduce the growth of foreign oriented youths or foreigners as Nigerians in the country. So that in 20 years time, we may begin to have new Nigerians in their adulthood.
“This initiative will also be adopted into the university level where best graduating students will be appreciated with national honours and appreciation prizes.
“NYSC scheme is another veritable tool to intervene in the lives of about 1.5million yearly graduates to becoming true Nigerians with values.
“The Ministry of Information along NOA is also planning to launch a reality show this year for the Gen-z and the Millennials with a view to reward positively for positive endeavors but will also compete for talents instead of indecency like most other reality show in our TV stations.”
When quizzed on the capacity of NOA to meet with the task at hand for 2024 and inactivity especially in the local government level.
Mallam Issa-Onilu replied that “the mandate on NOA covers basically everything you can think of across sensitization of the public but the agency is given next to nothing to cover.” He cited examples with many other ministries and agencies who have humongous amount of money in their budget for sensitization of the public that is even way more than the entire budget of NOA and how these agencies do completely nothing with these funds.”
