Institute Confers Doctoral Fellowship On Guardian Journalist, Others As AWITA President Harps On Career Plan

By Frank Oshanugor

The current Head, Defence and Security Affairs Desk of The Guardian newspaper; Odita Sunday and no few than ten others were on Saturday conferred with Doctoral Fellowship of the Chartered Institute of Human Resource Management (CIHRM) in Lagos.

The ceremony which took place at the Chemline Event Centre, Oba Akran Ikeja, Lagos also featured the induction of new members into the Institute.

The Guardian senior journalist, Odita Sunday is a Higher National Diploma graduate of Mass Communications from Auchi Polytechnic and a post-graduate of Maritime Administration and Management from the University of Lagos.

A widely travelled journalist, Odita Sunday was the President of the Crime Reporters Association of Nigeria (CRAN) for two consecutive terms that lasted six years. During his leadership, the Association progressively rose to an enviable position that has now placed it in the A-list of beat associations in Nigeria’s journalism space.

Delivering a keynote address at the event, President of Women In Trades and Agriculture (AWITA), Dr. Ruth Agbo, urged human resources managers in private and public sectors to always carry their personnel along in planning career progression for them.

Agbo remarked that human resources management in contemporary times requires team work and inclusiveness in other to achieve organisational goals at minimal costs and higher degree of returns on investment.

She pointed out that
“our heroes in the past have committed a lot of errors, wrongly believing that they could plan a career without the person’s knowledge.” She likened it to a situation where a square peg is urged to make a career in a round holed profession that has no correlation or bearing.

She wondered how a graduate of accountancy could be programmed by his organization’s human resources department to pursue a career in pharmacy or civil engineering when both disciplines are very much at variance from each other.

The AWITA boss who was one of the Doctoral Fellowship recipients also emphasized that team work is very important in every organisation so that they can achieve the same goal and objectives.

“As human resources managers we should recognise the diversity in teams but our job is to promote inclusion so that some people would not marginalised.”

Also speaking at the event, Registrar of the Institute, Dr. Gbenga Ereta, explained the importance of the induction of members and stressed that the primary objective of the institute is development of manpower for effective management of human resources in every facet of life.

According to him, if you look at Nigeria, you will understand the heterogeneity of people and the need to know that we have imbalance of knowledge at every micro- level. We will contribute our quotas that will have multiplier effect in the wider society,” he stated.