Introduction
Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu is the Director-General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA) a government body responsible for promoting national values, unity, and public reorientation across Nigeria.
A seasoned journalist, public communicator, and strategic thinker, Mallam Issa-Onilu has been at the forefront of the Federal Government’s drive to reshape Nigeria’s moral and cultural foundation through innovative policy directions.
Under his leadership, the NOA has developed the National Value Charter and spearheaded the Federal Government Policy on the Nationalization of Cartoon Content, a groundbreaking initiative designed to reclaim Nigeria’s cultural identity, promote indigenous storytelling, and strengthen national unity through media that reflects authentic Nigerian values.
In this conversation, Mallam Issa-Onilu sheds light on the inspiration behind the policy, its implementation framework, and its potential to transform Nigeria’s animation industry, preserve cultural heritage, and stimulate economic growth.
What inspired the government to move towards nationalizing cartoon contents and animations in general?
Okay, well, it is obvious that the basic challenge that we have in this country, which is fueling disunity and divisions within the country, is because our values have been eroded.
And when a people cannot, you know, live up to the values that they are supposed to live up to, then you’re going to have the kind of challenges that we have. You’re going to have citizens who are psychologically disconnected from the country.
You’re going to have citizens who do not see any motivation to love their country, to be patriotic. So, for you to be able to do that, you must do two things.
One is, you must know who you are, and you must bring that into documentation. It’s like you imagine, the two popular religions, Islam and Christianity.
Just take a moment and look at the two religions without the Bible and the Quran. How are you going to know what to do, how to do it, how to be a good Muslim, how to be a good Christian, when there is no Bible, no Quran? You know, so that will be difficult.
So, that’s why the National Value Charter became necessary for the country, for us to articulate what our values are, who are we supposed to be, who is a Nigerian, what are the expectations, what are the attributes, you know, that a Nigerian must have.
So, in the process of doing that, you also realize that there must be institutions to now nurture people on those codes of conduct. So, take for instance, I will still refer you back to the two religions.
So, you have Islam, you have Christianity, you have Quran, you have the Bible, but you don’t have the churches, you don’t have the mosques.
So, where are you going to nurture the adherents of those religions? So, the churches and mosques are the institutions of nurturing. It’s the same thing for a country.
When you create a value system and it is documented, you also must create institutions that will help you to nurture Nigerians. So, in nurturing Nigerians, you have to also understand the different segments within the society. Children constitute a very important segment of the society.
And so, how are you going to nurture them on those values? And you also must understand that the different segment of society has their different media consumption habits.
So, the consumption habit of the children favors cartoon. That’s where many of them spend five to six hours a day, both at home and in school.
So, where else will you take information to, to nurture them? So, currently they are being nurtured, and in the last three decades, we have produced foreigners as Gen Z, because we did not put any content.
We didn’t create models; we didn’t create value system orientation for them. So, through the foreign cartoon, which is 99.9% foreign, they have grown up to be more foreigner than a Nigerian.
Their orientation is towards that, and they have picked their role models from these characters they find in cartoons, you know? So, when you see a child of four, five years old doing certain things in the house, you just think it’s just a manner he picks up.
No, yeah, he picks it up, but he picks it up if you watch his cartoon very well, you will see the character he’s trying to emulate. If he’s jumping all over the place, jumping from table to table, you know, climbing chair and jumping, he may be watching a mini Spider-Man in your house or an Ironman, without knowing.
So, why are we not providing our own role models, our own traditional values for them rather than that? If your child doesn’t find the reason why as a Yoruba child, he should kneel down to greet his father, because he has never seen it happen in the characters, popular family characters in the cartoons, he doesn’t see that happen.
And then you begin to see at the age of five and six speaking vocabulary that are strange. You say, “Where are you learning this from?” Of course, if you pay attention to the cartoon he’s been watching, that’s where he’s picking the, even sometimes, you see children of five, six, seven, having accents that are alien to even the society.
“Where did you get this accent from?” It’s modelling, you know, that after some of the characters he sees in the cartoon.
So, if this is happening, and we are not being colonized physically, but we have been colonized mentally through these contents that have been pushed to our children and we are bringing to our home.
So, imperialism is ongoing, colonialism is ongoing without us paying attention. So, now we have to take charge.
As one of the seven institutions of nurturing that we identified and took to the Federal Executive Council to approve in September last year, which were all approved, this need to produce cartoon as a means of communication and a means of orientation, value orientation for our children, became one of it. So, that is what led to us having that as one of the policies.
How do you think the National Orientation Agency plans to implement and sustain the policy effectively?
Yeah, part of how we intend to do that is first and foremost to get the Federal Government buy-in. And thankfully, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is big on issue of unity, you know, so, and immediately he’s been our biggest supporter and promoter of this.
And that is very essential. And so, when we, when it got to FEC, he made sure that every single item on our request list was approved. That’s the first thing. They have been supporting us in terms of implementation as well.
And so, the first thing we did was to locate the players within the creative animation industry. And since we discovered them since last year, we tapped into what they are doing and giving them support.
And we are also getting the government side to begin to allocate resources uh, into it so that once they have the resources to produce, the industry begins to grow, the expertise continues to, you know, grow, and the, we begin to create employment, because there’s also the economic side to it, you know, we begin to create employment, begin to, you know, open up, and then we begin to have the kind of content that we are going to have.
You know, so this is how we are implementing it, you know, by ensuring that we bring investment, we create awareness, and support the players.
What benefit do you foresee for local animators and cultural entities for preservation?
Yeah, for the, for the entire, you know, economic landscape, you know, there’s a big benefit. The people who are the primary beneficiaries are the animators themselves.
Now, for the first time, they are having government focusing on what they are doing.
Not just because government want to support them, because government need them to be able to do something that is very dear and important to the country. So, they become assets.
And so, investment that will come into that means that the animators will get support in terms of funding. And secondly, they will get support in terms of enhancing the infrastructure and the resources and the equipment they need to be able to do it better.
And so, it turns what may have been just a, just passion for some people into real business and enterprise, you know, so this is how they are going to benefit from it.
How will this policy affect foreign animation content distribution in Nigeria?
Yeah, well, um, you know that even Nigeria has what they call import substitution policy. So, this is just another import substitution policy. We are not banning anything, but we want to, you know, ensure that we have local content.
And our target is within three years to reach 70% of local content. It will save us resources, because we are paying money to bring some of these things to this country.
So, foreign exchange also would, just the same way we felt that we needed to support Dangote to build the refinery so that we don’t have to look for money to go and buy refined petroleum products from abroad, it is the same way we want to do this.
So, it’s just, you know, that’s why in my speech, I call it reclamation, you know, and emphasis on our sovereignty as a country.
What’s the agency’s next step to engage private stakeholders in this initiative?
Yeah, the next step is to roll out the series that we are working with some of the animators to produce. And once we are able to achieve that, is to ensure that we do everything possible that the Lifanima Festival, for instance, grows bigger and bigger than this.
So, and last year we heard about it, we came as participant, but this year, we came as sponsor. So, next year, we will ensure we do better than that, and begin to, you know, and support them to grow.