The National Orientation Agency (NOA) has engaged stakeholders to strategize ways to deploy a new strategic approach towards resolving the multifaceted challenges bedevilling the country.
The Director General, NOA, Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu during a Two-Day Stakeholders’ Retreat on Re-Engineering the NOA Programmes for More Effective Re-Orientation of Nigerians Towards Achieving CLHEEAN Community for National Development, hinted that the retreat was designed to re-examine their strategies for delivering on the mandate of the Agency in line with the huge expectations of the government and the people of Nigeria.
The retreat brought together under one roof various stakeholders and technocrats, which include representatives from the EFCC, ICPC, NAWOJ, NTA, NBA, National Council for Women Society, and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), among many others.
Onilu stressed that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government places great value on reshaping attitudes, knowing that positive attitudes will help push the country forward to achieve national objectives. “For this reason, our parent Ministry was renamed the Ministry of Information and National Orientation to enable all of us to concentrate on the task of national renewal.
“This retreat is the first step in our wide-ranging strategies for developing new approaches, efficient systems, and citizen-based plans for engaging with our people in tackling the various issues affecting our country. So, your presence here is significant. It is designed to elicit the best of you and your organisations in this shared effort to ensure that we harmonize the way we engage in delivering on our specific but interrelated mandates.
“At this retreat, we will be discussing our new strategic approach, which is called CLHEEAN. CLHEEAN encapsulates our various activities and engagements with the various government institutions, development partners, civil society organisations, and the three tiers of government.
“The CLHEEAN project refers to the broad areas of Crime and Lawlessness, Health and Hygiene, Environment, Education, Abuse and Narcotics,” he explained.
The NOA DG added,” Many of you are experts and operatives in these thematic areas, and your contributions will be greatly valued. As I said in the letter to your organisations, “we do not doubt that the experience and expertise garnered over the years by your organisations will add significant value to the effort currently made by the NOA to achieve our mandate.
“We believe that your partnership and participation will enable you to identify mutual areas of confluence between our mandates that can fit into the partnerships model under the over-arching CLHEEAN programmes.
“As an agency, our new modus will be to constantly engage with our partners and seek their opinions as we work to make citizens, including netizens, part of the solution to our country’s challenges.
“It is trite that policies and programmes of government that do not enjoy the support of the citizens will ultimately fail. Citizens’ support is essential to the success of government and institution.”
He further reiterated that President Tinubu’s continued emphasis on the need for synergy, cooperation, and coordination in implementing government policies.
Onilu noted that NOA is set up primarily to take government policies to the citizens, adding that their presence in all the states and the 774 local councils provides massive opportunity for all stakeholders and partners.
The DG revealed that the retreat is part of the Agency’s efforts to institutionalize the National Lifestyle.
Also speaking, Mr Ayo Adewuyi representing the Director General (DG) of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), said,” I think when we want to begin the re-orientation of Nigerians the thing we need to do first is to cut short long protocols, which the NOA has done here.
“I think when we want to answer the question of why things are not working, the answer is simply embedded in patriotism and discipline. The moment we can re-orientate our people to be patriotic and to be disciplined things will work.
“There is a big task before the National Orientation Agency, because part of the problem is that citizens do not trust their leaders, how do we restore that trust? How do we ensure that citizens trust their leaders? If we can do this I think we will be on the right track.
“I want to assure you of the cooperation of the Nigerian Television Authority in this onerous task in re-orientation of Nigerians to achieve national growth.”
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