The Senior Special Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (The Senate), Sen. Ita Enang, has emphasized the value of our culture, saying our culture is our language, identity, pattern of feeding and our indigenous medical practice, adding that Nigerians should look deeper into our culture as the alternative solution to oil in the face of our national economic crisis.
Sen. Ita Enang stated this at the End of the First Semester Get-Together and Award Presentation Ceremony of Class 2016 of the National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO) Training School, Abuja Study Centre, on Wednesday, 3rd of August, 2016, with the theme, “Fixing Nigeria: A Cultural Perspective”, held at the Institute’s NICO Headquarters in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory.
He noted that the traditional ways of detoxification by our parents led to our healthy living, saying, “everything around us are for healthy living but we all need research to come up with the uses and benefits;” and reiterating that, Swedish bitters and other Chinese teas we take are the same with bitter-leaf, lemon grass and other leaves around us but that the difference is the preservatives they put to make theirs last longer.
According to him, President Muhammadu Buhari’s political will in banning the importation of rice is commendable and stressed the need for increased patronage of our indigenous products, especially rice, since it is fresh and comes straight from the farm as opposed to the foreign products, which contain preservatives and have already stayed longer than necessary, making the nutrients to lose their value.
The Distinguished Senator Ita Enang, who had had exemplary legislative business, starting at the Local Government Council level before progressing to the State House of Assembly and the Federal House of Representative, before going to The Senate, thus advised the Institute to embark on aggressive national cultural orientation to educate people on our culture and its benefits to national development.
He congratulated students of NICO Training School, Abuja Study Centre, Class 2016, especially the Class Governor of the Post Graduate Diploma in Cultural Administration programme, Mr. Michael Bush, for the invitation and thanked them for the Award given to him as Patron 002, and the Executive Secretary, Prof. Barclays Foubiri Ayakoroma, his “fellow Senior Malabite”, for his qualitative leadership and efforts in charting a unique path for the Institute.
Speaking earlier, the Managing Director, Ramboro Work Station Services Ltd and President, Demonstration Chapel International, Rev. Joshua Iboro, had stressed that women have a greater role to play in making our children to imbibe our culture and speak our native dialects.
Rev. Iboro reiterated that the event of celebrating our culture by NICO was very spectacular because it is something the nation has neglected, giving credit to the Training School for organizing such a laudable programme of bringing our culture into limelight.
He emphasized that our culture can put money and food on our tables, stressing that the problem with Nigerian culture is the fact that, there is no single acceptable dialect for communication among the people, who thus take foreign cultures to be superior to ours and not being proud of what we have.
He, therefore, enjoined Nigerians to come to terms with their mother tongue, food culture, dress culture, culture of respect for elders, discipline and training of our children to imbibe our culture, adding that everyone has vital roles to play in transmitting our culture to the next generation and that the responsibility lies more on mothers.
According to him, entrepreneurship is the pivot on which the nation’s economy can rebound and that NICO needs people like him and other indigenous entrepreneurs in order not to depend totally on government for funding, to move the nation to greater heights.
He congratulated the NICO’s Management under the leadership of the Executive Secretary, Prof. Barclays Foubiri Ayakoroma, the 2016 Class Governor of the Post Graduate Diploma in Cultural Administration programme, Mr. Michael Bush and the entire students for planning the event and considering him worthy of the Award as Patron of the Training School in the 2016 Academic Session.
On ground to receive the Distinguished Senator Ita Enang and Rev. Joshua Iboro were the Executive Secretary, NICO, Prof. Barclays Foubiri Ayakoroma; Coordinator, NICO Training School, Abuja Study Centre, Dr. (Mrs.) Regina Onuoha; Ag. Director, Admin and Human Resources, Alhaji Ibrahim Husseini; SA to the ES, Mr. Law Ikay Ezeh; Head of Finance and Accounts, Albert Ogbe Herbert; the 2016 Class Governor of the Post Graduate Diploma in Cultural Administration programme, Mr. Michael Bush; the Students of NICO Training School, Abuja Study Centre, and NICO Staffers.
NTS
Abuja Study Centre