Teach Your Child Security
Assistant Director, National Orientation Agency (NOA) in the FCT, Mr. Elija Yisa, has urged parents and guardians to always teach their children about security to promote awareness early in life.
Yisa gave the advice in Bwari in an address to participants at a one-day interactive session on safety tips on security operations organised by NOA for residents of the area.
He said that although security was the business of everybody, there was still the need to sensitise and educate people, especially parents on their roles at the home front.
According to him, the workshop with the theme, “security awareness and early warning signs’’ is important for parents to teach their children because the issue of insecurity affects every sector in the country.
He said: “Concerning children, there is the need for parents and guardians to know the type of friends their wards keep and also monitor them outside the home.
“It is necessary for them to teach their children not to divulge vital information about the home; like giving details of addresses and telephone numbers to unknown persons.”
He said that aside the children, “it is important for people to always be conscious of the way their cars are parked when in shopping complexes or open environments.’’
Yisa advised that people should always ensure that their car windows were always wand-up to avoid theft when in traffic.
He said that it was mostly due to the incidence of carelessness that people often experienced armed robbery, insurgency, kidnapping and trafficking in persons.
He, however, promised to take the awareness campaign to other areas in the FCT to stem the fight against insecurity.
The Chief Mobilisation Officer of NOA in Bwari, Mrs. Grace Ekpiwhre in her remarks said that the workshop was aimed at creating awareness about the early warning signs against security to keep people abreast with it.
She said that it was just not about security but the early warning signs that were mostly neglected, saying “that in some instances people say they saw suspicious persons keep this bag and walked away although nothing happened.’’
Ekpihwhre said “what we want to achieve is to ensure security conscious within the community.”
She said that the organisation would take campaign to schools, markets and also organise rallies, until there was a guarantee of security in the sub consciousness of the people residing in the area.
“Insecurity is not the business of the Federal Government alone, but that of everybody because we have to secure our lives and property,” she said.