NOA unveils national value charter, ‘7 for 7’

The Director General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mr. Lanre Onilu, has blamed most of the misconducts, failures and unpatriotic actions of Nigerians on their dependence on ethnic and religious divides for survival.

Onilu said citizens must be able to have a definition of who Nigerians are, stressing that every country or people have a national identity that culminates in their values.

He disclosed that to address this challenge, the NOA has introduced a National Value Charter that is based on “7 for 7”, which he explained stands for seven promises or obligations of the government to the people as well as seven responsibilities of the citizens to the country.

He stated that these reciprocal agreements and social contract between the government and the citizens are expected to foster accountability and patriotism towards national development.

According to the DG, the government owes it as a duty to discharge equality, democratic culture, entrepreneurship, employment, peace and security, inclusivity, freedom and justice as well as meritocracy to its citizens.

On the other hand, it is the responsibility of the citizens to exhibit a high sense of discipline, duty of care, environmental protection, accountability, tolerance, resilience, good leadership quality as well as awareness.

To drive this charter are some institutional policies. They include, Nationalisation of Cartoon Animation, Citizens Studies, Citizens Brigades as well as Global Reputation Management Campaign. Others are the Orientation Programme for Appointed and Elected Government Officials, Incorporation of Value Orientation as part of National Youths Service Corps and Reintroduction and Promotion of National Symbols.

Speaking at a Town Hall Meeting, the DG acknowledged that Nigerians are patriotic people without which the country would have gone down considering the numerous challenges it has encountered in the past.

He blamed the ugly situations witnessed across the country on non-evolvement of national identity. Onilu said: “And that is the reason we normally fall back on our ethnic or religious identity.

“So, we felt that we must have a national identification, which has the components of the definitions of who Nigerians are. The values that we came up with, we felt, must be a charter, an agreement or a social contract between the country and the citizens.

“So, the National Values Charter has two components. One is what we call the Nigerian Promise, which is the promise that this country is making to all of us as citizens. That is the motivation because patriotism is an emotional issue. You can neither enforce nor legislate it. You must motivate it. So, there must be a promise, something that motivates you to want to be patriotic.

“But we now have a reforming government in place. Never before have we seen a situation where a government is carrying out the kind of reforms that we are seeing now. These are reforms that require three basic things – vision, courage and intelligence.

“We needed a leader who has the vision to understand exactly what we needed to do. We also required a leader who has the courage to implement a vision and lastly, we needed a leader that has the intelligence to be able to harness all the positives around him and translate them to prosperity for the country.”