By Joshua Tosin Ogunsakin 
The National Orientation Agency has announced plans to sensitise no fewer than three million residents of Ondo State — and each state of the federation — on security awareness as part of a nationwide campaign.
The Federal Government agency also disclosed that 15,000 security operatives had already been deployed across the states under President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope agenda.
The Director-General of the NOA, Lanre Issa-Onilu, stated this on Monday while addressing journalists in Akure, the Ondo State capital.
Represented by the Director of Civic, Values and Democracy Education, Dr. Olukemi Afolayan, Issa-Onilu explained that the agency would carry out the sensitisation through the media, markets, town hall meetings, motor park rallies, road shows, and engagements with traditional and religious leaders.
He said, “Under the Renewed Hope Security Architecture, the Chief of Defence Staff directed the establishment of specialised units of the armed forces to enable rapid response, deploying strategies aimed at tackling our diverse security challenges.
“Some of the current strategies include the deployment of drones, armoured vehicles, and surveillance technologies, while over 15,000 new security personnel have been deployed nationwide.
“It is our intention that in all the states we will be carrying out the security awareness campaign, reaching no fewer than three million Nigerians per state through media engagement, markets and motor park rallies, town hall meetings, advocacy visits to traditional and religious leaders, road shows, and community engagements.”
The NOA also condemned what it described as “unwholesome and extreme graduation practices” among Nigerian students in secondary and tertiary institutions, vowing to clamp down on the trend through a nationwide values reorientation campaign.
According to Issa-Onilu, the rising culture of elaborate graduation ceremonies for pupils moving from kindergarten to primary school, or from junior to senior classes, was “condemnable and unacceptable.”
He said, “What should be a modest celebration of academic success has been corrupted into indecent and harmful practices, including students stripping off their shirts in public, allowing peers to scribble offensive messages on sensitive parts of their bodies, and, in some cases, degenerating into outright nudity.
“It is not only indecent, it is morally corrosive. Our children are being exposed to dangerous cultural imports disguised as fun. We cannot allow a generation to grow up thinking that public indecency is an acceptable way to celebrate success.”