The National Orientation Agency’s (NOA) Director General, Lanre Onilu, has revealed plans to make nationalism a compulsory subject in the country’s education curriculum in an effort to instill moral principles and values in the next generation of students.
During a familiarisation visit to the agency’s Niger State directorate in Minna, Onilu made this statement. In an interview with journalists, he stated that nationalism will be integrated into the nation’s primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions curricula.
He decried the overexposure of children to foreign content through cartoons, saying: “Soon, our agency will soon call for entries from professionals to produce cartoons that promote the local values of our people. Also, in no distant future, NOA will launch a mobile app containing indigenous cartoons, as well as those promoting local content, national values, and cultural heritage.”
Onilu also lamented that children in the country have been corrupted by foreign cultures right from their homes.
“Foreign culture has impacted negatively on the ethics and values of indigenous cultures.
“The effort being made now is to change the narrative of how Nigerians are being negatively portrayed across the world,” he maintained.
The director general of the NOA went on to say that in an effort to rid society of all negative tendencies, the organisation has chosen to unify all of its initiatives under the acronym CLHEEAN, which stands for Criminality, Lawlessness, Health, Education, and Environment.
Onilu continued by saying that in order to promote moral and national values at the primary school level, the agency will soon establish 37,000 citizen brigades throughout the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.