Centre Advocates Value Reorientation to Fight Insecurity

The Citizenship and Leadership Training Centre has advocated value reorientations in the fight against insecurity in the country.

The Director-General of the centre, Mr Jonah Bawa, said this in Abuja on Monday at a news conference in commemorating of the 70th Anniversary of the centre.

Supreme reports that the centre which is now a parastatal under the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development was established in 1951.

Bawa, who said the centre assisted in training military and paramilitary personnel, recalled that it also trained 5,000 civilian Joint Task Force (JTF) from the North East two years ago.

He added that the training was sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

“If you go by the nature of our training programme, we do value reorientation and mindset change, trying to change the mindset of people particularly the youths through value reorientation.

“If you look at the values that we have in our training, the value is to help people to be good citizens.

“Those involve in vices such as banditry and kidnapping should imbibe value reorientation.

“So, as we start imbibing these virtues as individuals and communities, people will automatically become good citizens,’’ the director-general said.

According to him, there are three types of citizens: good citizens, bad citizens and passive ones.

“So, our desire is to ensure that every Nigerian aspires to be good citizen by doing those good things that will make a good nation.

“We also assist military and paramilitary by way of training. In the past two years, the UNDP brought 5,000 civilian JTF from North East specifically from Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states.

“We trained them and the training is still ongoing and you know that civilian JTF are ones that are helping military to fight the war. These are some of the areas where we are coming in,’’ Bawa said.

He recalled that about six years ago, the centre reformed political thugs brought for training by Gombe state government.

The director-general added that it also facilitated the engagement of some men of the Man O’ War by the Oyo state government to assist in the fight against insecurity in the state.

According to him, our mandate is to instill leadership values for good citizens and responsible leaders.

“We have been training citizens for the past 70 years.

“The centre is training in self discovery; it is a short term but very intensive training that we allow people to pass through.

“At the end, they come up with some values that will help them in their personal lives, institutional life and also as good citizens.

“Some of these values we teach people are value of integrity, value of selfless service, value of team work, value of courage.

“What makes this centre to be unique is that our training is practical in nature. Whatever we teach, we practicalise it.

“That is why today If you ask anybody who attendèd our training 60 years ago, he would always remember the experience he had with us.

“We always leave participants a lasting impact and that is what we have been doing and that is what we continue to do.

“The training is for all Nigerians and you will all agree with me that the strength and weakness of any nation depend on the characters of the citizens.

“These are the values that we teach people to be good citizens and responsible leaders. So, every Nigerian is eligible to attend our programmes

“Because we have the executive courses, senior courses, intermediate courses and we also have specialized course for women and youths,’’ he said.