Director-General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, in this interview, sheds light on why the National Value Charter, a key part of the National Identity Project, is crucial to national rebirth. KUNLE ODEREMI brings some excerpts:
WHAT is the National Value Charter and how do you intend to implement it?
You see, one of the biggest legacies that this government is going to execute is the National Value Charter. You cannot have a society where you cannot define the shared identity of the people who constitute that society. If you talk of the Igbo today, they have a shared identity. You can write about it. You can define an Igbo man. You can define a Yoruba man. They have a shared identity. You can define even sub-sets of these groups. The Ijebu or the Ekiti have a shared identity. Communities have shared identity, which is the commonality of certain characteristics. They have it. So you now have a country where you don’t have a way of defining that commonality of characteristics. You must have it. It is only when you have that that you have a national identity. So when you say you’re a Nigerian, people would understand exactly what you are talking about and what to expect.
So today, even when they say you are a Nigerian, what does that mean beyond the appellation? What is it asking of you? That name, what does it connote? What are the attributes that they expect from you as a Nigerian? That we all collectively agree that this is who we are, our common identity. So, there must be that. It is only when we have that unique identity, which citizens of other countries have. And so what we have done with National Value Charter is to aggregate our positive characteristics and build it as the national identity, without which a citizen of this country is not fit to call himself a Nigerian.
So, what we have done is to bring out as something we can communicate, as something we can, you know, teach and for people to imbibe and for us to grow into it and live it. Take the two popular religions in this country; take Islam, take Christianity. You look at Islam and Christianity without the Bible and Qu’ran, how would they know the way to go? So, the National Value Charter is like our own holy book, the Holy Grail. Therefore, there’s a guidebook that tells you who you who are supposed to be. And the charter is an agreement that you have with your country. So, when you have the two religions and you have the Bible and the Quran, but you don’t have the churches and the mosque, where are you going to touch all people? That’s how we also proposed seven institutions of nurturing at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) last October. And thankfully, under the watchful eyes of Mr. President, the FEC graciously approved the seven institutions of nurturing. We are on the verge of unveiling the National Value Charter. When the President unveils it, we will begin to roll out these seven institutions of nurturing. In other words, these seven institutions of nurturing would ensure that no matter what route you take growing up, you will meet one of the institutions to nurture you to be a proper Nigerian.
What are these institutions?
Namely, those days in our schools, primary schools and secondary schools, we had what was called civic education, which was in the national curriculum, and it’s where you learn values, you learn etiquette, you learn leadership, you learn citizenship. Now it’s no longer taken seriously. So, we proposed bringing back what we call citizenship studies, where from the primary school to secondary school to the university, you learn what it means to be a citizen of Nigeria, which qualifies you to call yourself a Nigerian. So from primary school through secondary school, you learn this in graduated form. So by the time you’re emerging from the university and you’re given a certificate that says you have been found worthy in learning and character. That is the character aspect. You have been molded as a Nigerian. You have been indoctrinated, if you like, to be a proper Nigerian. That is one institution of nurturing.
The second institution of nurturing is what we call nationalisation of cartoon content. We have found out that in the last three decades, due to the changing socio-economic landscape across the world, parents no longer have that time. So, cartoons have taken on 60 to 70% of the parental role in the homes, nurturing children in the homes. So, from age two to 16, cartoons are in charge, and the cartoons our children have been raised with over the last three decades are 100% of those with foreign values. So, in the last three decades, we have raised foreigners. If you pay attention to the content of some of these cartoons, they are at variance with our culture, tradition and value system. Now, we have the Gen Z, who are victims of this lack of parental guidance.
During this period, we also didn’t provide them with heroes. Growing up, we were bombarded with all sorts of historical figures and their heroism. We were raised under the moonlight with tales that tell us the value of good conduct, of integrity, of good neighbourliness, sense of community and all of that. All the folklores were laced with these teachings. You don’t have all of that anymore. So the new heroes that our children grow up with are Spiderman, Iron Man and the like. So when you see a three-year, four-year, five-year-old in the home jumping from one chair to another, you’d think he’s an active boy when he is actually imitating Spiderman. He has taken on a role model. You see a four-year-old and five-year-old with a strange accent, check the cartoons he watches. There is a particular character that he is picking his accent and vocabulary from. He is learning from his heroes in the cartoons. They are teaching him, including mannerisms, cultures that are strange to ours.
Because of that, we proposed to the FEC that we have to nationalise cartoon content. And in NOA, we do not believe in banning anything, say, ban the content; ban foreign cartoons. No. There is what is called import substitution- grow your own locally and begin to substitute the foreign with your own. So why would you want a ban? Why not continue to encourage the local producers until they’re able to overwhelm the market and there is no need to import because it will not be profitable in the long run? That import substitution. It’s the way we want to approach the issue of cartoons-produce more local content. Investment should go into it. There are several competent animators in this country that we have discovered beyond what we ever imagined. So, all we need to do is direct investments into animation and let them produce cartoons about us, about our culture, our morals, our values, ethics, tradition, and people begin to see that.
The third, we had the Boys’ Scout, Girls’ Guide, Boys’ Brigade in schools. These tried to raise leaders, raise citizens on values, on ethics, and they raised people who are positive role models to their peers. Now, we don’t have most of those things in schools anymore. So we also proposed the introduction of Citizens’ Brigades in primary and secondary schools. We plan to start with 37.000 Brigades across Nigeria, a thousand per state in the first year, so that over the next few years, there will be millions of Nigerian children who are citizen brigades, school-based, being nurtured as proper Nigerians to become models to their peers. This was also approved.
The fourth institution is the NYSC scheme and Industrial Training Fund. NYSC is the last bus stop before you empty these people into the society. So instead of the one year of service just focused on some extracurricular activities and then posting to some particular institution to work, we should also put value orientation as part of the one-year service system. So when they come out of NYSC, you’re turning in average of a million people every year into the society properly baked. So, in ITF, where you train artisans, you also ensure that you include in their training what we call value orientation. So, in a country where we have about 12.7 registered artisans, you can imagine how far this will go. Combine them with the NYSC.
What is the next one?
The fifth is a two-week value orientation for appointed and elected government officials. Once you are appointed or elected, before you resume, you go through two weeks of value orientation to understand what is required of you as a Nigerian, so that when you get there, you’re to fulfill the tenets of the charter. This is the fifth institution of nurturing.
And then take this along with the police, the military, the civil defence, the immigration, the customs the Department of State Service (DSS), all of them incorporating in their training manual the value system as part of the curriculum so that when they recruit, they are not just trained to be skillful as a policeman, but also to be as Nigerians.
And then you have the national symbols. In every country of the world, respect for your country starts with respecting the national symbols of your country. You cannot claim to be patriotic, you cannot say you are a good Nigerian, and you do not have respect for the national symbols. The flag, the coat of arms, the national anthem, the country’s currency, the constitution, the national ID card, these are all national symbols. And if you do not have respect for them, you cannot claim to be a proper Nigerian. You must have seen a lot of things we are doing around the promotion of national symbols on television. This is to let Nigerians know that, first and foremost, you must recognise them secondly, you must respect them and do not abuse any of them.
Lastly, the seventh institution is global reputational management. The perceptions of the rest of the world of us matters. When you are calculating assets, you’re talking of the financial assets of a country, of the infrastructural assets and also the reputational assets. No matter how big a company is, no matter how financially buoyant a company is, if it does not have a good reputation, it will go down. That is one asset you must protect and promote. So the reputation of Nigeria is an asset. The same way you’re growing the foreign reserves, you just also grow the reputational assets deliberately. But you cannot grow a reputation until you have defined what constitutes that reputation. That’s what is contained in the National Value Charter we have been talking about. In reputation management, there is a difference between what we call image and identity. Your identity is who you think you are. Who you see yourself to be is not what people see you as.
It’s the job of reputation managers to study the gap and see why, despite who you think you are, you’re communicating wrong signals. If we say we are confident people, they must see confidence in us. If we say we are the leaders of Africa, every Nigerian must carry that asset wherever he goes and be mindful of how he behave because the rest of the black nation or world depends on him to lead. If we say we are smart, we must express our smartness positively. We should not allow them to give the example of our smartness by citing an example of how a Nigerian sold an airport that does not exist. That is our image, not our identity.
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