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The burial programme for late veteran broadcaster, author and poet, Alagba Adebayo Faleti, began on Wednesday with prominent personalities and scholars calling on the government to immortalise the late cultural icon.
The dignatries made the call ar a service of songs organised by the National Orientation Agency, Oyo state Directorate office, Agodi, Ibadan, stressing that Faleti’s contribution to the growth and development of the country can not be overlooked.
Alagba Faleti was the pioneer state director of Mass Mobilization for Self Reliance, Social Justice, and Economic Recovery (MAMSER) before it was renamed National Orientation Agency (NOA).
Among those who spoke at the event was former minister of education, Prof. Tunde Adeniran who was also the pioneer Secretary-General of the NOA.
Adeniran stated that if not for the efforts of the late icon, especially in the areas of media, culture and tradition, many aspects of the Yoruba cultures including language and literatures would have gone into extinction.
While noting that immortalising the late icon must go beyond the funfare and jamboree of the burial, the former envoy insisted that Alagba Faleti remains one of the greatest Nigerians that must be immortalise adding that even in death, the deceased lived, served and left a kind of legacy that many people will continue to emulate and recommend for the younger generations.
Speaking in the same vein, the Executive Vice Chairman, Ibadan School of Government and Public Policy, (ISGPP), Dr. Tunji Olaopa, said the best tribute to pay to the memory of Alagba Faleti will be a policy rethink directed at reconceptualising the national reorientation vision, objectives, strategies and institutional framework for implementation, so they could become the organising framework for locating the country’s rich cultural heritage at the centre of development imagination and thinking.
Dr. Olaopa who noted that National reorientation will remain rhetoric as long as people perceive the effort that will make their lives better as rooted in injustice, parochialism and anything but fairplay and honesty of purpose.
Also speaking at the event, Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, Mr. Toye Arulogun who represented the state governor, urged the people to always live a life that will make people speak well of them when they are no more.
He said the state governor is proud of all the contributions and deeds of the late icon, especially in the areas of culture and tradition which was why the state government is partnering with other stakeholders to celebrate the late icon.
He assured that the state government is already looking in the direction of immortalising the late icon promising that the government will not forget the families and colleagues the deceased left behind to further sustain the works and efforts of the revered elder state man.
In her welcome remarks, NOA state Director, Mrs. Dolapo Dosunmu, recalled that Alagba Faleti revolutionized the art of mobilising and information dissemination as the pioneer State Director in the defunct MAMSER.
She said his transformative leadership style made him a moral compass who every member of staff looked up to for direction adding that the metamophosis of MAMSER to the present NOA was a product of the commitment and doggedness with which Faleti and his colleagues in other states pursued the mandates of MAMSER.