Lanre Issa-Onilu, Director General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA) says the agency was neglected for years by previous administrations until in recent months when it began to witness a surge in activities.
He highlighted efforts to rebuild the agency’s infrastructure and online presence, saying it had recorded increased social media engagement in the last two months.
Speaking on Channels TV on Wednesday, Issa-Onilu attributed the previous neglect to a lack of government attention.
He said, “Absolutely, it is true for several years NOA appeared to have disappeared in the horizon but within the last four months we’ve done a lot.
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“First and foremost, we put structures in place across platforms and the tools that we need to be able engage. If you look at our social media engagement in the last two months, we did well. This required a lot of resources, we are managing what we have.
“And again earlier in January, we invited a number of advertising agencies in this country. We had a very highly resourced committee.
“The agency has been somewhat abandoned. I won’t say the agency was not doing much but the agency was abandoned. If you go through what the agency has catered in last 10 years you feel sorry.
“As important as NOA is, over the years government has not paid attention to it but thankfully we have a new government in place that is very concerned about the issue of attitude and behavioural change.”
Issa-Onilu further outlined plans to introduce a compulsory nationalism programme in schools, aiming to instill core values in Nigerians from a young age.
“Part of what we are doing, we have actually 7 things that we have identified that we are going to do this year for nurturing Nigerians, including those who occupied position of authorities.
“One of such is to introduce nationalism study that has all the value system from primary schools to the university so that you learn what it is to be a Nigerian while in school and it is going to be a compulsory subject,” he added.
