The National Orientation Agency, NOA, part of the Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation, is one of the least esteemed Federal Government's departments and agencies. Since the dawn of the current democratic dispensation, the NOA has languished in the shadow of relevance because no regime has shown interest in deploying it to push the values of the country.
The NOA is an offshoot of the defunct Mass Mobilisation for Self-Reliance, Social Justice and Economic Recovery, MAMSER, established by the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida on July 1987. It was an offshoot of the Political Bureau Report of the Dr Samuel Cookey confab aimed at preparing Nigeria for a transition to civil rule.
MAMSER was headed by Professor Jerry Gana, an eloquent and passionate social mobiliser who successfully pulled Nigerians into the vortex of Babangida's transitional programmes. But unfortunately, the transition programme resulted in the annulment of the freest and fairest election Nigeria has had till date on June 12, 1993.
MAMSER was scrapped. The NOA emerged in 1999, with Alhaji Idi Faruk as DG. Disappointed Nigerians have showed little interest in the NOA's activities. Faruk resorted to holding seminars from one state to the other, which essentially reduced the NOA to an elite talk-shop organiser.
Poor funding by successive governments made it more difficult for the agency to organise even seminars. Today, the agency, with branches in the 36 states and Abuja as well as 774 Local Government Areas, has become an organisation where the virtually idle and ill-motivated workers go to warm their seats and get paid their salaries.
With the appointment of one of President Bola Tinubu's acolytes, Lanre Issa Onilu, as the DG of the NOA, fresh efforts are being made to mobilise support for the proper funding of the NOA. Last week, Adewale Hammed, who represents Agege Federal Constituency in Lagos State, introduced a motion on the "Need to Review the Budgetary Allocation of the National Orientation Agency of Nigeria for Improved Citizen Orientation".
The Federal Government appropriated a miserly N8,819,470,967 to the Agency in the current budget, and there is no guarantee that the entire sum will be released.
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This agency is suffering the double jeopardy of its employers - the Federal Government - and the citizenry, showing lack of interest in its activities. The fault is hardly that of the agency itself. It was the same political leadership that created and benefited from it that, through evil-minded political maneouvres, alienated it from the public. As it is now, increasing funding for NOA, desirable as it may be for some, could be a waste of funds unless government makes governance interesting again to the citizens.
Unless government regains the people's trust, who will want to listen to propaganda jingles by any government agency?
