When he assumed office as the Director-General of the National Orientation Agency, Mike Omeri thought his major challenge would be how to galvanise the somewhat laid-back human resources within the organisation into active service for the love and benefit of the nation. Today, more than a year in the saddle, Omeri spoke with a group of journalists on the activities of his agency and other national issues. Our Deputy Editor, Nation’s Capital, Yomi Odunuga, was there. Excerpts:
it’s over 18 months since you assumed duties as the Director General, how has the journey been?
Well, it has been interesting in the sense that most of the programmes we set out to implement in order to refocus the agency have been implemented. The implementation, I must stress, was made possible by the support we are getting from our development agencies and especially President Goodluck Jonathan, for the interest he has shown in the agency. Also, the hard work of some of the staff within the agency has been quite strengthening and enormous and it has led us to the stage that we are. When we resumed at the agency, there were some programmes that they were doing but we needed to expand the scope and the horizon of the agency so that it can be properly situated within the structure of government and governance because that is what the agency is supposed to be. And so, we commenced with reaching out to government agencies so that we can synergise towards implementing government programmes for Nigerians. But more to that, we have also extended our reach to development partners and other partners seeking to have interactions with communities in which our agency provides a platform since we are present in all the local government areas and successfully, we have done one or two programmes with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) where we implemented the Freedom of Information campaign. The campaign is an advocacy in the community and it was highly successful.
When you came in, what would you say were your plans for the agency?
Well, first is to make it a resource centre. A resource centre where information can be provided on nearly every aspect of government because part of the mandate of the agency is that the agency is supposed to know all kinds of agency and it means we should be knowledge-based. Secondly, we needed to be proactive in terms of sensitisation and mobilisation of citizens to support or even understand the direction of government and thirdly, to be activity-driven. We should be full of activities that will sensitise, mobilise, explain and create new things that will assist Nigerians and government itself towards achieving a national consensus to nation-building.
The NOA came out of an agency that focused on the reorientation of Nigerians on core societal values. And, at the moment, we are faced with corruption and all kinds of social vices, what is your agency doing to sensitise Nigerians on the effects of these vices on the larger society?
We have done quite a number of programmes. While some are at the conception stage, we have commenced implementation on others. But in pursuing this, we also need to take care of the deficiencies within our own system. We need to strengthen our institutional capacity to face the challenge out there because we cannot give what we don’t have. So, we needed to also mobilise ourselves so that, together, we can go out there in the field challenging and fighting the issues. You know, like change to anybody, it comes with challenges and that is what the president is also doing with the introduction of the transformation agenda. A lot of things that were normal will become abnormal. But what is important is how well the agency is able to mobilise people, situate their interest within the change that is taking place so that, together, we can fashion out the programme that will enhance the welfare and wellbeing of Nigerians.
There is no transformation without resistance; do you face such resistance even from within?
Yes, we do and that is why I said that, even here, there were processes here that were not too correct and you will find out that people will deviate from such things naturally. So, as we try to block some of the loopholes, you will find out that even the corrupt practices that are here are even fighting us back. It is fighting us back in a manner to either stop us or make us conform but we will not do that. We will not preside over an agency of government and see resources being wasted.
In civil service setting, we know what it means when the issue of transfer comes up, especially with entrenched interest, how have you been able to deal with this entrenched interest?
We have successfully done the staff audit and we are able to know who can do what. We are in the process of implementing and repositioning the process but we were delayed because the fund we requested for is slow in coming. The president had earlier approved some money to be given to us for that purpose but it has not come; though a little bit of it came which is not enough for us to implement the large scale reform that we want to implement. But we are going to start; we will post people to where we know they have adequate capacity or where if we give them little training or capacity, they can discharge their duties efficiently and effectively.
Recently, the president inaugurated the advisory committee on national dialogue. In the past, the NOA was in the forefront of uniting the populace. Do you think you have done enough to reconcile Nigerians or is it a challenge to you now that the conference is about to come up?
Well, for us, we have even recommended dialogue as an agency because one of the programmes that we have introduced is community dialogue. We go round and engage communities to dialogue with us in order to explain government policies and we have had a lot of issues coming up from such discussions. We believe that fashioning or convoking a conference with a dialogue session with Nigerians will reaffirm their faith in this country and reconcile ourselves at all levels. In fact, we were supposed to have something similar to the Truth Commission in South Africa but we had to shift it because the timing was not too convenient. It would have been held on the 25th of October 2013. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, speakers from Ghana and other places will be coming to share experiences and knowledge. On the National Dialogue, what the president has decided to do is to listen to Nigerians because like he said and like I also told you, this administration is a listening one and the president has the courage to take decision on issues that some other persons couldn’t do in the past. This conference will give Nigerians the chance to dialogue, to reaffirm their faith in this country and to work for reconciliation and reintegration. The agency has not failed; it is in line with what we are doing now.
In your view, why do we still have problem of ethnicity?
First is the nature of the struggle for independence because we did not fight it from a united front. All the regions needed their own independence first before they realised that they had a bigger fight. So, by the time they came together, there were certain values that guided their way of life; that guided their vision of their own society and shaped their agreement to collaborate with the west. So they brought it to the table; we wanted independence and we did not want to fight and we did not have a reason to fight because it was something that was discussed on the table; it was so easy for them to bury their differences at that time, take the independence and continue with the process of national reconciliation. Unfortunately, their time ended apparently the way it did and so the vision of uniting us, flowing from what they started or the thought of what should be a united Nigerian, ended with them. So, most of those who came near as part of the story of Nigeria started holding on to their locality and that is why today, most of the people who come into office, as soon as they get there; they start looking at their villages. How they can emancipate their villages to the detriment of other villages. So the struggle is, ‘let me get power so that I can build my village.’ It was not driven by the need to serve one Nigeria. Most of us are not driven by that rather the need to get what I want to get for my own village.
How long are we going to continue with that kind of mentality?
It should stop and that is why transformation agenda came. Transformation is a turn around. The president said lets turn around from what we are used to doing before. Let’s have a U-turn and not a roundabout.
Would you say your frequent movement out of the office has impacted negatively on the agency, especially when one of the allegations against you is that you are hardly around?
It is eye opening because we have reached communities that have not been reached by any government programme before. Sometimes we stop on the way and give people leaflets. Some people don’t understand what the flyers mean but we make them understand everything. The communities we stop are always excited. Even the mid-term report, we have decided to take it down to the people and a lot of people have come to dialogue with us. They tell us this is the first time government is putting on the table what it is doing and it gives them the opportunity to contribute and we bring back the feedback to the government. These are the interesting things and they even encourage us to go out more so that new ideas that they give us are transmitted to the President. All these happened by road, there are also things when we travel by sea and air. We have had reason to travel by ferry to core riverine areas, to interact with communities, they tell us what their needs are and we report it to the government appropriately. Our job is not the one where you need to sit in the office all the time, it makes you to interact with the people and that means we need to take government to the people either in the market place or the street.
What has been your most critical challenge since you assumed office?
Well, it is the paucity of resources. It is not enough to go round to do the programmes that we want to do. Also, we lack basic tools for the work here. In some of our offices here, we don’t have furniture. The furniture that are there have been there for more than twenty years. Sometimes, staff bring furniture from their homes. We need vehicles too but we are grateful Mr. President gave us almost 35 vehicles which were distributed to some of the states and headquarters. We also need mobile cinema vehicles which are not available at the moment. They are costly.
Recently, NOA signed an MoU with NEMA and NESREA on sustainable flood disaster management. What is the agency’s role under the collaborative engagement?
NOA initiated the move in the first place. After we initiated it, we reached out to NEMA, NESREA and other agencies.
