The National Commission for Democracy (NCD) on Wednesday 19th August 2020 concluded a one day validation exercise on the three civic messages developed to ensure national unity, political tolerance and cohesion, early warning and conflict prevention, and lawlessness and rule of law across the country. The validation exercise attracted participants from all walks of life to ensure that the appropriate messages are captured in the jingles to be aired on radio stations nationwide.
According to the Director of Programs at NCD, Khalil Sillah, their role at NCD is to create an enlightened, peaceful, democratic and just society in which the citizens are empowered to enjoy their rights and discharge their responsibilities with the desired attitudes for national unity and development. He said they decided to hold the validation exercise because they are collectively required to provide intellectual and technical leadership to ensure that their contents meet the accepted high standard, and are responsive to the peace, security and governance challenges of the country.
The workshop aims to ensure high quality messages are produced by determining their validity, significance and originality, adding it also improves on said quality and makes it suitable for outreach purposes based on NCD’s target audience.
NCD chairman, Dr Abubakarr Hassan Kargbo said the workshop aims to validate the messages put together by experts on Wednesday 12th August 2020 on three themes that will be translated into six languages, including Mende, Themne, Limba, Krio, Kono and Fullah.
He assured that the jingles will be produced on political tolerance, national unity and cohesion, early warning and conflict prevention and lawlessness and rule of law, adding that these are crucial areas in the country’s body politic that must be addressed to promote peace, democracy and good governance.
“The rationale behind putting these messages together is primarily the need for Sierra Leoneans to be educated on how the general citizenry should behave in their various communities in general and the state in particular,” he said.
According to him, this is against the backdrop that Sierra Leoneans must not only become mere active participants in the governance process, but that the process itself must also be in the hands of those with the requisite knowledge. He said this is why the commission has embarked on educating the critical mass to become more knowledgeable of the governance process, and thus the opportunity to promoting the objectives of the State of Sierra Leone.
The NCD chairman assured that the validation workshop is also mandated with the task of approving the scripts for the jingles on the identified themes, as well as approving messages designed for social media (audio-visual). “Our nation is faced with a serious challenge with many people relying on hearsay to form views and opinions on issues of national import that have serious implications not only for the promotion of democratic good governance but also for the maintenance of and stability. We must be reminded this is against the backdrop of the limitations of majority of citizens, even in terms of views and opinions they express,” he maintained.
He explained that it is within this environment in which the critical mass of Sierra Leoneans lack adequate knowledge of the importance of the governance process that the NCD continues to take the bold step to correct erroneous views and ideas with a view to changing the mindsets of the general citizenry to imbibe a positive perspective via putting together qualitative messages devoid of partisan politics.
By Alhaji Manika Kamara