The Out-of-Home Advertising Association of Nigeria (OAAN) used its 41st Annual General Meeting to hold up a mirror to itself, and what came back was a portrait of an industry proud of how far it has come, yet unusually candid about what still stands in its way as Nigeria heads into another political campaign season.

In his opening remarks, Sola Akinsiku, President of OAAN, framed his administration’s tenure as the beginning of a deliberate shift away from how the outdoor advertising business has traditionally been run.

“We have inherited a system of transactions. It is time to begin the process of transformation that will engender and strengthen the quality of our service delivery, guarantee higher returns on the advertisers’ visibility communications investments and usher our practice and business into the realm of unhindered productivity and profitability,” he said.

For Akinsiku, that struggle is ultimately about protecting what he called the sanctity of the industry, and ensuring that brands placed on out-of-home platforms get the visibility they are paying for. He pointed to what he described as tremendous progress on the national audience measurement exercise, a project subscribed to across the marketing communication industry and designed to give operators reliable, dependable and industry-wide accepted data for deploying, managing and assessing the reach of OOH platforms.

Delivering a goodwill message on behalf of the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON), Dr. Olalekan Fadolapo, Director General congratulated OAAN on 41 years of existence, noting how much the industry has transformed from one political era to another. He reminded the gathering that regulation in Nigeria runs on two tracks, statutory and self-regulation, and argued that the strength of the entire framework rests more on the success of the latter.

According to him, OAAN’s ability to bring its members together and push the association forward is itself evidence of that strength. Dr. Fadolapo situated the AGM’s theme, OOH Media in Political Campaign Season, Policies, Politics and Fair Practice, within a wider concern that ARCON has been raising at forums such as its Town and Gown engagement themed Platform, People and Regulation. He noted that state signage agencies have introduced their own rules that need to align with the broader regulatory framework, and cautioned that this alignment only works where personal or selfish interest is kept out of the conversation.

Dr. Fadolapo

Out-of-home, he said, is strategic enough to advertising and economic activity that any state without visible OOH presence says more about that state than about the practice itself. With the Independent National Electoral Commission expected to release political campaign timelines within weeks, he assured the association of ARCON’s continued support and collaboration.

That same tension between politics and fair practice sat at the centre of the keynote address delivered by Dr Theodore Ekechi, Chairman of Marketing Media Group Limited, in a paper titled Out-of-Home Advertising Association of Nigeria in Political Campaign Season, Policies, Politics and Fair Practice.

“Only an OAAN Charter will equip the organisation to realistically resist and fight the impunity in the regulation of out-of-home business,” he said, urging OAAN in the meantime to lean on ARCON and its Advertising Codes of Practice to press for compliance.

“Political neutrality is perhaps the greatest asset of any professional association. The moment an industry association is perceived as favouring one political interest over another, it risks losing the confidence of stakeholders across the socio-political economic spectrum.”

It was against that backdrop that the Charter question found its way back into the room later in the AGM, this time carrying royal weight. Otunba Ayodele Olumoko, Cultural Ambassador and consultant for the Olojo Festival, attended on behalf of the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, delivering the monarch’s personal greetings to the congress. Olumoko revealed that the Ooni, who has remained a consistent supporter of OAAN since decorating its leadership years earlier, had actively backed the association’s Charter bill during its public hearing, news that was warmly received by delegates still weighing Ekechi’s warning about what the Charter’s absence continues to cost them.

Otunba Ayodele Olumoko, Cultural Ambassador and consultant for the Olojo Festival

The conversation then turned from regulation to debt, with Dozie Okafor, President of the Media Independent Practitioners Association of Nigeria (MIPAN) offering a candid breakdown of debt in the media buying relationship. He distinguished between what he called good debt and bad debt.

“I was having a conversation with one of my partners and he says, ‘You’re owing me a lot.’ I said, ‘That’s a good thing. My clients are also owing me a lot. The moment they stop owing me, I should be worried because that means they stop doing business with me. At every point in time, 50% of my billing is being owed to me. Now, that’s a good thing,'” he said.

Bad debt, by contrast, he tied to late invoice submissions, poor reconciliation practices and weak internal financial controls. Okafor pushed back on the habit of inflating debt figures, recalling an outdoor partner who claimed his agency owed a random figure of 500 million naira, only for investigation to reveal the sum included forward invoices running all the way to December while the conversation itself was happening in August.

“That is not a realistic analysis of debt. The fact that you’ve been given an MPO till December doesn’t mean that money is due and doesn’t mean it is owed to you.” To keep the ecosystem liquid, he said his agency pays vendors twice monthly and holds regular reconciliations, and he reaffirmed that media agencies and OOH practitioners remain natural partners whose survival is tied together, urging transparent pricing and full compliance with regulatory approval processes.

Dozie Okafor, President of the Media Independent Practitioners Association of Nigeria

Closing out the goodwill messages, Tolulope Medebem, President of the Experiential Marketers Association of Nigeria (EXMAN) congratulated OAAN and reflected on how political seasons place practitioners at the intersection of creativity, public discourse, commercial interest and national responsibility.

For Medebem, fair practice is not passive compliance but an active commitment to protecting the profession’s integrity, one that demands a level playing field where excellence rather than expediency decides who wins campaigns. She left the congress with a line that echoed the Charter debate, the debt conversation and Ekechi’s warning all at once.

“Political seasons come and go, governments change, campaigns end, but the institutions we all are building and the standards we all are upholding will remain long after the campaign posters have come down,” she said.

Tolulope Medebem, President of the Experiential Marketers Association of Nigeria,