The Visioneer of Safety in the Home (SITH) and Pioneer Director General of the Lagos State Safety Commission (LSSC), Dominga Odebunmi, has called on retired government officers to join in the process of advancing and promoting the culture of safety in the state.
She made this call while presenting a paper on “Enhancing the Status of Lagos as a Resilience and Livable Mega City With a Focus on Safety” at the 8th Summit of the Association of Lagos State Retired Heads of Service and Permanent Secretaries (ALARHOSPS) which held on 18th of August, 2021, at Alausa, Ikeja.
While calling on them to become ambassadors for safety, she stated that more work needs to be done to improve safety climate and adherence in the state tipping that engagement of retired civil servants would lead to improvements.
She elucidated the need for newer and more contagious methods of sensitizing the public through safety messages as she reiterated the role of retired civil servants to lend their voices towards expanding the reach of safety.
Dominga said, “When you put information into songs, it stays longer with you and that is one thing that is synonymous to Lagos State. We love songs. We dance. We want to enjoy ourselves.”
“So why don’t we put the requirements for safety culture in those songs. This is what SITH Is driving at. The area of jingles. Retired heads of service can lend their voice to safety jingles,” she added.
She expressed her dissatisfaction at the progress of safety culture in the state and emphasised the need to move from presence of safety climate alone if we must see improvement.
Given stats on progress while she was in office as DG, she said, “We were able to see that the safety culture in adherence of the society has moved from 1% to 46%. Safety climate has moved from like 5% to 70% and that is because we are safety conscious here: there is an increase in the consciousness of safety through the usage of signs, messages or stickers.”
While calling on other states to take a cue from Lagos State, Odebunmi harped the need to liaise and consult with safety stakeholders towards birthing original safety footprints for their localities.
According to her, any state with proper safety structures would attract influx of people to reside in those states.
“Let us work with you and create what is fit for your own community. If they don’t develop their state, those who come to Lagos will not want to go back.” she said.
Prioritize Safety over Politics!
To safety professionals, Dominga lamented that one of the major challenges affecting the contributions of safety professionals was the interference of politics into the drive of professionalism.
“Any professional team that allows politics and selfish interest to come into the driving force will find itself regressing and may later become irrelevant,” she said.
“We need to really wake up and move forward from hurting each other but we should put the public first. Time will heal the hurt,” she said.
