Association urges government to adopt communication in policies, programmes

The Association of Communication Scholars and Professionals of Nigeria (ACSPN) has called on the Federal Government to make communication a major component of its programmes and policies in order to ensure participatory peace building in the country. National President of the association, Prof. Lai Oso, who made the call in Abuja at the opening of its 3rd annual conference tagged ‘Strategic Communication, National Security and Peace Building in Nigeria,’ said any government programme that is not owned by the people or doesn’t get the people to be actively involved will only create problems.

He said, “There is need for the government to make communication a major component of its programmes and policies; you need to communicate the programme very well so that people can understand, buy into it and eventually own it. We believed that government programmes and policies must have a very good communication component”.

Oso, who noted that the problem of the present government is lack of communication, said if government is planning any programme and fails to include communication into it, the tendency is that the programme may be a total failure down the line.

According to him, “That is why we want to see how communication can be a very good component of government policies”.

On issue of security, the communication scholar pointed out that security is not just about putting military all over the place but that they need intelligence from the local people themselves, adding, “so if you don’t communicate the essence of security to the people, they don’t really feel to be part of it but feel alienated.

“When you bring soldiers, if they are not communication-conscious in terms of their image, the perception they create, and if they send wrong signal to the people, then they will have problem”.