The Director, National Orientation Agency (NOA), Rivers State, Mr Oliver Wolugbom, has called for collaboration with ministries, agencies, commissions and corporate institutions to fill communication gap between the government and the governed.

The NOA boss made the call last Thursday while presenting a paper at the monthly profressional lecture series of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations. (NIPR), Rivers State Chapter held in Port Harcourt.

Wolugbom, in his paper titled: The Task of National Orientation: Gains, challenges and prospects” said the agency carries out the function of dissemination of information on government policies, programmes and activities with the sole aim of creating awareness and understanding among the citizenry but regretted that most chief executives have not shown sufficient commitment to issues of public enlightenment and value re-orientation at the grassroots.

According to him, the chief executives have the shallow belief that NOA is a mere federal agency that has nothing to do with the state or local government.

He further noted that NOA needs the support of NIPR and Public Relations practitioners, remarking that both NOA and NIPR are in the same business of public enlightenment, two-way communication and building of good image.

He identified inadequate funding, stigma of partnership, high level of poverty in the country, quest for political leadership and resource control arising as a result of ethnic, religious and cultural diversity, unexamplary life style of our leaders and poor implementation of the law as the major challenges confronting the agency and urged all to see the issue of orientation as everybody’s business.

To meet the challenges, the NOA boss said the agency is building capacity through training and retraining of staff and appealed for patience and collaboration for more efficiency.

Chris Oluoh