The Commandant General, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, Ahmed Abubakar Audi, has called on the National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO) to extend the Nigerian Indigenous Language Programme (NILP) in the Barracks and the nook and crannies of the Federation.

Audi who made this known at the opening ceremony of the 3rd edition of the language in the barracks programme, held at the NSCDC Headquarters, Abuja, said the programme will help Nigerians and officers in appreciating the necessity of knowing other languages apart from their own primary language.

Represented by the Acting Deputy Commandant General, Dr Nnamdi Nwinyi, Audi who said the programme is apt and quite necessary for the Corps at such a point in our national life, stressed that the learning of our indigenous languages will help in the effective delivery of the mandate of the Corps.

“Based on our mandate which is involving ourselves in the protection of critical national assets of Government, crisis mitigation and other ad-hoc assignments as given to us by the Federal Government, it behoves that personnel of the Corps should get used to this language programme brought to us by NICO.

“The essence of this programme is to inculcate the idea of our culture not going extinct. Our culture and language is what binds us together in the country but is fast fading away out of the carelessness of either elders, government or institutions.”

According to him, the programme is so key to the Corps as personnel are most times transferred from one geo-political zone to another irrespective of language and cultural diversity to assignments where they are needed.

He further said for them to relate very well with their host community, there is always the need for them to go through the basics and learn how to speak the language of their host community so that they will appreciate the role the corps is playing for them.

The Commandant said language and culture are unifying factors and as a national para-military agency of government, the corps most times post people out and where they cannot speak the language, they cannot blend or gather intelligence.

In his response, the Executive Secretary of NICO, Ado Muhammed Yahuza, said the Institute is willing to extend the programme to all the Commands of the Corps, saying NICO has 13 language training centres for now and more efforts will be made to cover the remaining states.

He expressed the belief that especially now that a lot of officers and men are being deployed to various places where there are security challenges outside their homeland, the training is of utmost importance to officers in view of the need to understand our own culture and languages towards intelligence and information gathering.

While giving the assurance to participants that the programme is well packaged to achieve its objectives with the assemblage of qualified and experienced resource persons, the ES said without understanding our local languages, it will be difficult for officers to effectively discharge their duties.