NICO partners with institution, China to drive its mandate

Mr Barclays Ayakoroma, the Executive Secretary, National Institute for Cultural Orientation (NICO), has lauded the cooperation between Nasarawa State University, Keffi (NSUK), and the institute towards realising its mandate.

The scribe made the remark in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Abuja Ayakoroma, who is currently a visiting associate professor in the department of Theatre and Cultural Studies, NSUK, said NICO expects to reap huge benefits from the relationship.

"We are working on partnering with other universities in some courses so as to ensure the abundance of high level technocrats in the culture industry,’’ he said. According to Ayakoroma, the university, being the only institution in Nigeria that specially runs this kind of programme, will also collaborate with other stakeholders.

"These include such bodies as the Nigeria Institute of Public Relations, UNESCO and other organisations with like interests,’’ he said. We plan to extend our training programmes to our offices in the six geopolitical areas of Akure, Ilorin, Katsina, Yola, Owerri and Yenagoa.

"In addition to these offices in the zones, we also have our Lagos liaison office where we have a training school which has already graduated five sets of trained personnel. We have also just set up another training school in Abuja which is going through its first academic session and these efforts have been hugely beneficial and have encouraged us to do more.

"Only recently we went into a partnership with the Chinese Cultural Centre in Abuja and we are glad to report that the Cooperation has started yielding dividends. Nine of our officers have gone to China for three weeks training and have so far been involved in various seminars and workshops.

"So far and from reports reaching us, the results have been quite illuminating,’’ Ayakoroma said.The official said that the partnership with China had also helped the institute to identify other mutually beneficial activities that could be explored to promote sector-wide development.

He called on all interested sector stakeholders to key into the partnership initiative to ensure rapid sustainable development of the tourism industry.