The Director of Administration and Human Resources of National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO), Barr. Abayomi Oyelola, mni, has reiterated the need for workers to be proactive in their duties and engage themselves in meaningful activities during office hours.
Oyelola, who gave this advice during the NICO 2014 Promotion Exams, which took place on Thursday, 10th July at the Auditorium of the Federal Civil Service Institute, Kubwa, Abuja, assured that the exercise was geared towards the assessment of how familiar and vast the candidates were with the Institute’s operations, activities and what they had been able to acquire by being voracious readers.
His words: “Today is a day of reckoning. For some of you that I have come across, one time or the other, I have always advised that when you are idle, try and read something. I want to assure you that it is an exercise that is geared not to punish anybody so. I want you to relax your mind; it is not a graduation certificate but it is about assessing how well you are vast with the workings of NICO.”
The NICO Director Admin & Human Resources, informed the candidates that what was required of them during the exams was to obey instructions and not necessarily memorisation of ideas but how well they could communicate such ideas on paper.
Continuing, he stressed that, “It is the idea that matters, not trying to get as much points as available to make 100%; but once you can scale the pass mark, you are as good as somebody who is going to get 90 or 100%. The unpalatable point I am going to send across is that if you go against the instructions that are going to be given to you, your paper stands disqualified, cancelled, or shredded; and it is good as you have not done the promotion exam.”
A Professor of Theatre and Cultural Studies and astute scholar, Emmanuel Dandaura of the Nasarawa State University, Keffi (NSUK), who has been conducting the promotion exams since 2010, was on hand to supervise the exercise, as he guided the candidates on modalities for the exam, and wishing them success.
A total of eighty-six (86) candidates from the Institute’s zonal and state offices (except Enugu State Office), made up of three (3) candidates for the directorate cadre, level twelve (12) was one(1) as well as level eleven (11) and level ten (10).The thirty-four (34) candidates who were due for promotion to level nine(9) had twenty-nine(29) persons in attendance. For level eight (8) were thirty-two (32),level seven (7) were ten (10),level six(6) nine(9) in number, for level five (5) they were two (2) and level four (4) two (2) in number,made up the population of the half -filled auditorum for the two and half hours (2hrs 30mins) exercise.
It would be recalled that the 2013 NICO Promotion Exams held at the same venue on the 30th of January, 2013 and had since been implemented; the conduct of the promotion exams has had the record of being under very conducive atmosphere since the inception of Dr. Barclays Ayakoroma-led administration in 2010 and this year’s was not an exception.
Njideka Dimgba
Corporate Affairs
NICO Abuja