The Presidency has charged students of secondary schools across the nation to take ownership of the campaign to change Nigeria and rid her of negative and dysfunctional attitudes by making honesty their watchword and honest Nigerians their role models.
The Acting Director General, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mrs. Ngozi Ekeoba gave the charge at the Flagg-off of the Ethics and Values School Club of the Centre for Promotion of Ethics, Values and National Integration (CENPEVNI) where she represented the Presidency and the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture.
Ekeoba said as agents of change, students must imbibe and exhibit at all times the national core values of Discipline, Integrity, Dignity of Labour, Social Justice, Religious Tolerance, Self-reliance and Patriotism in order to develop into the kind of leaders the nation needs. While commending the Ethics and Values School Club initiative, she urged well-meaning Nigerians to emulate the Centre and initiate programmes that will ensure that Nigerian children grow up with the right orientation.
In her address, the Executive Director, CENPEVNI, Mrs. Mercy Sokomba was emphatic that with ethical reorientation, the moral fabrics of our nation can be strengthened through the younger generations and a better future secured for the nation. She urged the youth to place more premiums on ethics and values than on monetary and material gains, adding that the Centre would monitor and periodically recognize schools whose students display the highest ethical standard.
She called for the implementation of the 2001 Kuru Declaration which indicates the consensus of Nigerians to maintain a national value system that reflects the National Ethics as contained in Chapter 2, Subsection 23 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution.
Chairman of the occasion and Board Member of the Centre, Dr. Tom Adaba described History as a very important part of the nation’s school curriculum, stressing that a nation without a history or the communication of same to the younger generation has no future. He said the youth have a right to information about their history while the nation has a responsibility to provide that information as a way of teaching and sustaining the values of society.