The National Senior Citizens Centre (NSCC), has pledged its commitment to sustain the declaration of Oct. 5 by President Muhammadu Buhari, to celebrate senior citizens in the country.
Dr Emem Omokaro, the Director-General of NSCC, stated this in an exclusive interview in Abuja on Monday.
It will be recalled that Buhari had declared Oct. 5 every year as the National Day to celebrate Senior Citizens in Nigeria, for their contributions to the development of the country.
Speaking on the first attempt of the initiative, Omokaro described it as the best thing, which could be done in recognition of the importance of having older ones to serve as role models in the midst of the younger generations in the country.
She said the motivation behind such initiative could not be over emphasised as it was highly embraced across the nation.
“First of all, let me describe that day; it was a nationwide celebration. In fact, we have the documentary where all the states of the federation participated, no state was left out and it was real serious celebration.
“Older people on the streets were matching, even Churches, Mosques joined us because it has never happened in Nigeria before.
“The president graciously declared October 5th to celebrate National Day for the celebration of older people and it was well celebrated. “
The NSCC boss said the agency would continue to sustain the initiative by adding other things to ensure a colourful celebration of older citizens in Nigeria.
“We will continue to celebrate it, we will ensure that other Nigerians would celebrate with us in subsequent periods because when you talk about older persons, you are talking about families, grand fathers, grand mothers, so it should be family celebration.
“So, we are looking at going forward to tie it to families celebration and we are also looking at children joining their parents to celebrate and we are looking at so many other things. “
She, however, assured that whatever happened at the national level to sustain the programme would be mirrored in the states as well as the local government levels for inclusiveness of all the older persons nationwide in the subsequent celebrations.
Omokaro said that the agency was waiting for the country to settle down after the forthcoming general elections before the reprogramming of the next actions to sustain the initiative as constituted by the president.
“We are waiting for the elections to settle before further plans for future celebration, we want to start our campaigns to sell this programme because our strongholds should be local government levels, ” she explained.