APCON challenges to receive incoming government’s attention

Patricia Akwashiki, minister of information, has promised to draw the attention of the incoming government to the Advertising Practitioner Council of Nigeria’s (APCON) challenges in her hand-over note.

She said this during a recent familiarisation visit to APCON, where she assured that she will do all she could to help the agency, adding that her recommendation to the incoming minister was that the agencies should be used more effectively.

“If the government is very serious about these agencies, it should give the agencies more responsibilities. It is not only during campaign you tell people what you are doing, information should be continuous,” she said.

The government is doing its best to accommodate a lot of ministries as it covers quite large chunk of areas, and so many other ministries that are demanding attention from government, she said, saying it is becoming increasingly clear that government cannot shoulder all these and commended APCON as it constantly looks at areas of possibilities where they can get more funding, even from their private partners and the industry.

“When APCON told me they had challenge of funds, until now, I didn’t know that you have nothing to do with all the big companies with billions of naira at will to spend. Now, I know you can only talk about the fees you collect from members and it is quite educating to hear and know about your problems,” she said.

Garba Bello Kankarofi, APCON registrar, at the visit, said if government had appreciated the enormity of power yielded by the commercial enterprise, it would had appreciated the amount of investments in infrastructure and human-resources as well as legal framework required to adequately regulate and police the advertising environment.

According to him, “in the area of product and service advertising, APCON has managed, against all odds, to secure or compel a high level of compliance. The level and frequency of infarctions is however huge enough to give concern. More facilities and manpower are required to carry out more effective monitoring and enforcement.”

Kankarofi said the time had come to revisit the law establishing APCON with a view to correcting the fundamental flaws that delay or hamstring enforcement of appropriate sanctions against violations of the law and code of advertising.

He said that in response to this, the government should acquaint itself with the provisions of the APCON law, so as to identify flaws in the law and initiate necessary amendments.

“With the recent and rapid developments in the mass media technology and environment, which has posed new challenges for effective monitoring of advertisements, APCON will need to upgrade its technological capacities and for the purpose, requires budgetary assistance from the government,” he said.