Non composition of APCON Council, setback for the industry
For over a period running up to five years now, the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) has operated with the absence of a substantive Governing Council, which is the highest decision making organ of the advertising industry apex regulatory body.
Following the assumption of office by the President Mohammadu Buhari led Federal Government in 2019, the government had taken the drastic decision to suspend the heads of all parastatal under government ministries. APCON being one of the serving parastatal under the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture was not spared by the government decision as this resulted in the immediate suspension of the Udeme Ufot led Governing Council of the regulatory body.
This development has generated serious concern among worried stakeholders in the advertising industry with members of the various sectoral groups joining in the continued call on the authorities to urgently reconstitute the Council of APCON.
Despite all entreaties and high level corporate lobbying, the industry’s demand for APCON Council has not been heeded by the government. Moreover, no cogent reason has been advanced to explain the government’s indifference to the industry’s demand.
It was in a bid to further attract the government’s attention on the subject that led to the convening of the first ever national advertising conference by the industry stakeholders in November of 2019. At that conference, the major implications of the absence of a Governing Council for APCON was clearly highlighted and the message was well communicated to the relevant stakeholders in the hope that prompt attention would be given to the issue by the government.
It must be clearly stated that the establishing act of APCON stipulates that the council must be administered by a Governing Council which must be headed by a Chairman whose responsibility would be to, among other things, dictate the pace and give direction to the council operations.
But the continued absence of a Governing Council coupled with the absence of a Chairman of Council has rendered APCON spineless to the extent that it lacks the needed instrument to take effective policy decisions on matters relating to the practice of advertising and such related subjects. Advertising and, by extension, integrated marketing communications as a social sector requires all the necessary regulations for discipline to reign supreme in the industry. Anything short of this would lead to chaos and might, at best result in a disservice to society.
In a situation where no one is sitting at the helm of affairs to call the shots, everyone becomes a law to him or herself. It is in the light of this reasoning that government must come to the realisation and have a re-think towards urgently reconstituting APCON’s Governing Council.
Alluding to this position during a recent interview with MARKETING EDGE, Ijedi Iyoha, Acting Registrar of the Council observed rightly that without a well constituted Council, APCON would at best be reduced to a mere lame duck. Iyoha rightly observed that “there are certain responsibilities squarely bestowed on a Governing Council by APCON’s enabling Act and to that extent, those responsibilities are having constraints in their executions as a result of the continued absence of a Governing Council”.
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