Spirit of Lagos… cultural re-orientation for Lagos residents

TO ensure that Lagos residents adopt the right values in their interaction with fellow citizens, institutions and public utilities, the Spirit of Lagos recently launched a campaign.  The campaigners, who have been using different media platforms to dish out their messages for a new culture and values expected from the citizens, believed that this is now the time for people to have a rethink especially about actions and decisions that does not portray them as good citizens. 

    The campaign is built on four cardinal points. They are social justice, civic responsibility, neighbourliness and citizenship. 

   Under social justice, it believes that all Lagos residents are respected and their rights preserved. And this include holding governments responsible for the protection of the rights of the people to free and fair elections and to the freedoms of speech, religion, assembly, communications media, and petition for redress of grievances without fear of reprisal. It also includes right to privacy; and to the guarantee of the rights to adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care among others.  

   Under civic responsibility, the group demands the understanding that all Lagosians have a part to play in developing and sustaining the communities and public services

    “It is about citizens wanting to contribute to the society. It is comprised of actions and attitudes associated with democratic governance and social participation. Civic responsibility can include participation in government, church, volunteers and memberships of voluntary associations for the purpose of service to other people. Actions of civic responsibility can be displayed in advocacy for various causes, such as political, economic, civil, environmental or quality of life issues.”

    The thoughts under neighbourliness require doing unto others, as they would have done to them. 

   The last point expected good citizenship from the people where they voluntarily commit to knowing and maintaining law and order.

    It stated “The status of a person recognized under the custom or law of a state that bestows on that person, who is called a citizen, the rights and the duties of citizenship. That may include the right to vote, work and live in the country, the right to return to the country, the right to own real estate, legal protections against the country’s government, and protection through the military or diplomacy. 

    “A citizen may also be subject to certain duties, such as a duty to follow the country’s law, to pay taxes, or to serve in the military.”

     The thoughts in the four cardinal points had been broken into empathic messages that the ordinary citizens can connect with whether educated or not. Apart from using different media platforms to communicate with the people, the messages are crafted around day-to-day activities that the average citizens engage in. 

  Whether billboard messages, radio jingles and television commercial, the messages easily connect and could be easily understood by the citizens. For instance, one of the messages is about doing the right thing by using the pedestrian bridge to cross the expressway instead of competing with vehicles to cross the road. 

  In some of the jingles and commercial, the messages are packed in a way that apart from scene, where the person who is about to take an unlawful action, a neighbour passerby, or even a member of the family calls him or her to order, there is also where the persons regret his past negative action.

   For instance, in the radio jingle about using the dustbin, the women regretted dumping refuse in the drainages because when the rain fell, house got flooded because the drainages were blocked as a result of dumping refuse in the drainages.     

    So, with this negative consequence of his action, she felt that she needed to stop dumping refuse in the drainages but in dustbin. For the billboard advert of the use of dustbin, it was double edge communication of being good neighbours and doing the right thing. In the message, a neighbour called a woman who was about to dump refuse in an open space to order, urging her to use the dustbin instead. It was about being good neighbours, one of the cardinal points of the campaign and then doing the right thing. 

   Subtly, the campaign tactically embedded the thoughts in each of the four cardinal points in its messages without overtly saying it. And the way the campaigners had been going about it using different platforms no doubt would yield fruits because repeating a message over allows people to notice such messages, then give it a thought, remember such messages which may come in handy when they are at a point where they are at crossroad. This may then give room for a favourable impression about the message and then the likely adopt of the content of the messages, which would yield to a change of unlawful action.