• Friday, March 29, 2024
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NOA seeks to partners NIPR on public orientation

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Rivers State director of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Oliver Wolugbom has advocated collaboration between the agency and the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) in the areas of value re-orientation and public enlightenment on social, economic and political issues.

Wolugbom says there is serious need for re-reorientation of the citizenry to embrace dignity of labour, peaceful co-existence, consumption of Nigeria-made products, among others.

According to him, Nigerians also need re-orientation to eschew all vices in public life including corruption, dishonesty, electoral and census malpractice, ethnic and religious bigotry, examination malpractice, etc.

The NOA director spoke recently as a guest speaker at the monthly professional development lecture series of the NIPR, Rivers State chapter.

The lecture titled “The Task of National Orientation: Gains, Challenges and Prospects,” traced the history of the agency to 1987, when the Political Bureau set up by Ibrahim Babangida, a retired general, recommended a body (MANSER) that would help in mobilising Nigerians for social and political development. This eventually became NOA through Decree No. 100 of 1993.

According to Wolugbom, the vision of the agency is “to develop a Nigerian society that is orderly, responsible and disciplined; where citizens demonstrate core values of honesty, hard work, and patriotism; where democratic principles and ideals are upheld and where peace and social harmony reign.”

He said the task of the agency was enormous, hence the need for collaboration with other government agencies and professional bodies such as the NIPR.

In introducing the lecture and the speaker, the chairman of the Rivers State NIPR Professional Development Committee, Jossy Nkwocha, said the job of the agency was purely a public relations job, which requires PR tools and strategies to actualise. All the core officers of the agency, he said, should be PR professional.

Chairman of the occasion, Celetine Ogolo, general manager of the Tide Newspapers, Port Harcourt, lauded the efforts of NIPR in organising the lecture to educate the members and the public on the job of the agency and how it could leverage on the PR profession in Nigeria.

The lecture elicited a lot of interactive exchange between the guest speaker and the members of the institute who attended the event.