By Musa Wada
The national honours award which is Nigeria’s top award mechanism to reward recipients and deserving citizens and foreigners alike, who have contributed immensely through their patriotism, selfless service, ingenuity, exceptional performance in their place of work and their contributions to the growth and development of the country is a key promoter of national values.
In Nigeria, this award which is a yearly event for the country has been a symbolic gesture by all governments since the attainment of Nigeria independence in 1960.
The conferment of the award on deserving citizens has in turn given rise to the country having a reward system that helps galvanize the energy of the citizens to work harder to make the country, in every sector, more productive and enterprising.
The importance of the national honors award can never be overemphasized because the gesture by government to recognize it’s deserving citizens in all sectora of our national life has helped create a new set of heroes for the country, be it in the academia, the civil service, the sports sector, the industrial sector, the political realms, industrialists, the media, the cultural sector, among the youth and including notably the disabled among others.
The awards have the potential to encourage citizens to inculcate and sustain the culture of hard work that will give rise to national excellence.
Countries around the world have created a yardstick for the reward system for their country and Nigeria is not an exception. As we work for national excellence, the country must not deviate from the laid down systematic and pragmatic way of rewarding excellence to its deserving citizens. Over the years, we must tell ourselves the truth that the national honours award has become like a charade and this is simply because due to many negative factors and consideration, this hallowed award has always been bestowed on people of questionable character, the unpatriotic, and political bigwigs who might have dipped their hands in our national treasure. And by conferring this award on those that are undeserving, we had become like a laughing stock in the international community.
The Minister of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs, Hon Zaphaniah Bitrus Jisalo must now holistically create a new way and guidelines for the recruitment of deserving recipients for the country’s national merit award. He must match his words with action through a strategic plan in giving the nation, in line with the renewed hope agenda of Mr President, an award system that every citizen in the country and even the international community will relate with. The Ministry of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs which is responsible for this award must recommend deserving citizens always for conferment by Mr President.
The Ministry of special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs must now create a new system for this national awards because it will be a rapid departure from the old ways in which criminals, quacks, undeserving citizens and unpatriotic element bought their ways to get this national award. We trust in the ability of the new Minister of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs, Hon Zaphaniah Bitrus Jisalo, with the approval of the President for the national honors award, to be held this year to make yet the best national honors award in the recent history of our country as this will galvanize our citizens to work assiduously hard to create excellence thereby bringing growth and development to our country.
Musa Wada wrote in from Abuja.
