The Director General of National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, says the agency under his watch is being reformed to meet its mandate and expectations from Nigerians.
The DG stated this Wednesday while speaking with journalists at the opening of a two-day strategic review meeting between NOA and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
He said: “This programme speaks directly to the reforms we have embarked upon at National Orientation Agency (NOA). For a long time people believed that the NOA has not been doing enough and there are a lot of expectations especially given the situation that we found ourselves in the country.
“So this is the time for the NOA to rise up and take up that position and deliver on the mandate that the nation expect of it.
“For us, we realized that we have some structural issues, we have some problems with the way we engage especially, with our stakeholders and partners and other agencies of government in order to have better outcomes and UNICEF has been a very important partner with us in all the areas of our engagements with communities and Nigerians generally.
“So we are having this interaction for us to share with them our new focus , the approaches we are trying to embarked upon and the reforms that we are having so that whoever wants to work with us or collaborate with us understands clearly what it takes.
He said majority of the problems Nigeria is facing are attitudinal and until the nation developed national values that citizens subscribe to, nothing meaningful would be achieved.
“Nigerians expect a lot from us and we cannot afford to fail Nigerians. All the challenges we are currently facing in the country name them; kidnapping, insecurity, terrorism , corruption whatever are attitudinal.
“And for a people to have the right kind of attitude they must have values they subscribe to. Unfortunately for us in this country, we have not developed national values.
” Until we have national values that we all adhere to, we cannot continue to talk about symptoms,” he said.
Speaking during the event, Mr Kshitij Joshi, UNICEF’s Chief Social and Behavior Change Officer, said that the purpose of the meeting is to use the National Orientation Agency partnership to highlight new methods in the field of social and behavioural changes that align with UNiCEF’s philosophy.
“This will give stakeholders access to the new global direction and the chance to broaden their horizons,” he said.
