National Institute of Public Information (NIPI) Kaduna has matriculated new students for the 41st Public Information Officers course with an appeal to them to put in more efforts aimed at achieving the desired objectives.

The occasion which was held at the institute main campus along Isa Kaita Road, Kaduna was witnessed by many prominent personalities

Speaking at the occasion, the permanent secretary, Kaduna State Ministry of Information and Home Affairs, Mrs. Hannatu Ugah, urged the students to make the best use of the opportunity by paying attention to what they would be taught to make them agents of positive change in their working place.

Mrs. Hannatu said there was an urgent and crucial need for bridging the skills gap that exists in the public information sector to enable information officers to effectively handle their duties and compete favourably with others.

She added that successive generation of information officers has proved deficient in writing and reporting abilities, which are crucial to the discharge of their duties, as she noted with sadness the continued lowering of standards and inability of lower level officers to effectively handle duties assigned to them.

The permanent secretary therefore, urged NIPI to, as a professional institute, take a critical look into the deplorable situation and come up with a re-training and re-orientation scheme that would ignite the passion, enhance the efficiently level and professional practice of information officers in the country.

Earlier in his speech, the director of the NIPI, Mr. Charles Chikezie, said the institute, which is 30 years old this year was conceived by the Federal Government as a home-based training institute to fill the yawning gap in the training of information officers in place of the rare and very expensive foreign training programmes.

He urged the new students to brace up for the challenges and face both the theoretical and practical demands of the course with zeal and excitement, knowing that the course is short and not going to be easy as they would be required to cover the syllabus in one month rather than the usual three.

He advised the students to conduct themselves in the most mature and orderly manner and to be self-disciplined and called on government and other institutions to avail themselves of the opportunity offered by NIPI for the training of their information officers.

Mr. Charles, however, appealed to Kaduna State Government and other private sector organizations to come to the institute’s aid my making contributions towards its development and sustenance.