OAAN……rumble in the jungle
For members of the Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria, (OAAN) it may not be the best of time. Wait a minute! Did I just say members alone? Again, for better understanding, let me cap with the fact OAAN, the umbrella body for all registered OOH practitioners is currently undergoing some challenges that may sink it or twist it. Not the one given to apocalypse, I will perhaps pray very fervently that the beleaguered OAAN should witness a miraculous divine touch or healing as most popular in Christendom to overcome its current hemorrhage.
As I finally decided to say a few things about the embattled association, I feel mostly pained and unease to share a little from all that I know which is at the heart of the OAAN’s many troubles. Before I am misunderstood or misquoted, let me say that I derive no joy whatsoever in the unpalable developments that are currently bedeviling the Nigerian OOH, members of OAAN and indeed the association.
Hitherto, OAAN was a giant in the comity of advertising sectoral groups. Quite unfortunately, today the giant lays partially prostrate gasping for fresh air of relevance and reaching out blindly every inch for compass and direction.
While I register my profound sympathy for all my friends and industry leaders who once held the forte in this sector, I challenge the younger generation practitioners who now bear the mantle of leadership of the association to wake up from their self-imposed slumber and re-invent as well as re-discover themselves.
As the Yorubas would say, “kokoro to njeefo, are efo lo ngbe”, meaning that “the insect that is destroying the vegetable lives within the vegetable”. Literally or metaphorically, the problem at the heart of OAAN’s, continued relevance resides within the association. As one of the self-appointed or anointed historian of the OAAN historiography and histrionics, one is privileged to know that OAAN has found itself in this state of dejavu over deep-seated unethical business practice of dog-eating dog.
The industry and indeed the association have over the years embraced with bare-faced effrontery acts of betrayal, back-biting and back-stabbing’s either before prospective clients or before other stakeholders. In the years gone by, some members go behind the scene to lobby clients belonging to fellow OAAN members and would not mind to go to the ridiculous extent of cutting agreed OAAN rates all in a bid to out-bid fellow practitioners.
Most times, such unscrupulous practitioners would eventually win the bids while those who wanted to play by the rules would lose out. As this unethical practice persisted, OAAN looked helplessly away thereby leaving the field out there uneven and too hot for fair contest. Not only that, the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria, (APCON) the regulatory agency of the federal government tasked with regulating advertising in all aspects and ramifications also find it herculean to whip OAAN members involved in rate cutting and other unethical practices into line.
Rather, than get together to sanitize its ranks, successive generation of OAAN leaders played the Ostrich as they faced the issue of multiple regulations. Let me also state categorically here too that past leaders of OAAN couldn’t have placed so much priority on battling internal decadent while they were confronted at different points in time by state government on-slaughts to run members out of business.
Thus, the major pre-occupation of generation of OAAN past leaders was to ward off external aggressors like Lagos State Signage and Advertisement Agency, LASAA and sundry other agencies set up by almost all state governments in the federation. In all of these, the threat posed by LASAA, right from its inception poses the greatest deadly threat to OAAN and its members businesses.
Although spirited efforts were made by well-meaning OAAN past leaders and some members to abort the birth of LASAA, not much could be achieved as some OAAN members became moles within the association. This development, sadly enough gradually grew into an affliction amongst the body. From being a mere affliction, it has become a cankerworm.
The story is told of how the association would be holding its executive council meeting and one or two members of OAAN would be recording meeting procedures with a view to front-loading same to LASAA authorities thereby playing Judas Iscariot to the whole group. Besides, members of this body are said to be sometimes individualistic when it comes to business pursuit. However, the last straw that appears to have broken the camel’s back is LASAA under its current headship by Mobolaji Sanusi who was appointed General Manager of the agency. If OAAN and its members have managed to survive and out-live former LASAA bosses who equally introduced draconian rules and measures to tighten the noose on OAAN and its members, the current leadership of LASAA which has been aggressively promoting and backing JC Decaux, a Paris based foreign global OOH leading agency may finally be the undertaker of the association and some of its member companies.
In Lagos state today, virtually all billboards owned by OAAN members are vacant. Reason. LASAA has refused to renew the rent permit for OAAN members claiming that the outdoor companies are owing it huge debts.
Contrary to such a claim, OAAN members believe the Lagos state agency deliberately wanted them out of Lagos metropolis. In the midst of all these, the over one billion naira owed OAAN members by Lagos state government as a result of 2014 billboard campaign in the run up to the 2014 general elections for the All Progressive Congress (APC) by most OAAN members are yet to be paid! The alleged debts on vacant billboards in Lagos state have continued to rise while OAAN members could not pay as LASAA has refused to grant renewal of their sites.
As if this was not enough headaches, JC Decaux which LASAA has been promoting aggressively have been encouraged to approach OAAN members with a view to buying off their sites, which albeit represent their inheritance.
A copy of JC Decaux morbid site acquisition proposal letter in MARKETING EDGE possession showed the foreign agency’s bold effrontery in rendering local agency owners in OOH useless by taking over their sites at a peanut! One offending aspect of the clause in the letter which clearly shows collision between JC Decaux and LASAA states that, prospective OAAN members intending to sell off their sites to JC Decaux should not bother about LASAA permit as the foreign firm would secure that! This is something that local agencies are unable to procure with ease from LASAA.
Frustrated and held down by LASAA’s seeming belligerence and draconian rules, some OAAN members are said to be fallen prey to JC Decaux by selling off their sites. Some bigger OOH local agencies who used to have huge financial war-chest are currently reeling under the jack-boots of LASAA which has been illegally over-charging OAAN members over the years without due regards to its own enabling laws. (story on that for another day).
The confusion and dilemma which LASAA has thrown OAAN and its members has created a backlash for the nebulous string of unity that hitherto bound the association and its members together. While different groups within OAAN have emerged to evolve solution to the myriads of LASAA induced problems for members, the authorities at the Lagos Signage agency has continued to throw spanners into the works thereby frustrating any chances or possibilities of resolution.
It was authoritatively gathered that the Mobolaji Sanusi led LASAA has frustrated not quite a few efforts by leading lights of OOH to get the sympathy and support of the National Leader of All Progressive Congress (APC) Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. It was gathered that the frontline politician’s efforts to prevail on LASAA to give some breather to local advertising companies was mindlessly frustrated by LASAA who refused to bulge but rather keep propagating falsehood and untruths about the OAAN members.
Matters got to an ugly peak when recently the group efforts of OAAN board of Trustees headed by Chief Babu Foluso Akinbobola was again blackmailed before LASAA as spearheading campaign of calumny against the regulatory agency.
Chief Akinbobola, a past president of OAAN and Chairman of MediaLink was shown the red eye of the “Almighty LASAA” which promptly shutdown all its billboards in Lagos. Sensing that his company was been scape-goating for a collective struggle against LASAA tyranny, Chief Foluso Akinbobola, an immensely influential adman and a frontline Idanre Chief quickly beat a retreat less his business of many decades are crippled overnight.
To convince LASAA that Media Link was not leading any revolt against the Lagos State Signage agency, Chief Akinbobola quickly resigned his chairmanship of OAAN BOT as he quietly recoiled to his corner. It was not until this was done that the Sanusi led LASAA lifted the embargo it imposed on Media Link business and even went a step further to award the Ilupeju Coker street outdoor company a debt waiver of 65million naira.
Today, OAAN remains without a BOT. The association remains a toothless bulldog. It is everybody for himself and God for us all. The current exco of the association is also confused and largely divided. As a friend of the association for many years, it will be impolitic to talk about all the bitter politics of intrigues bedeviling the OAAN exco. This is so as it won’t be out of place to plead with all players and those concerned to weigh all their options properly and re-unite for posterity.
It will be good if the present crop of OAAN leaders can gather themselves together with members and past leaders and tell themselves some home truths with a view to moving the industry forward. The present war of attrition, backbiting, betrayals and bellyaching against one another won’t help the cause of industry re-invention. It is time for OAAN leadership to rise above personal and egoistic interest and fight their common enemies as the industry trudges gingerly on the brink.
They must checkmate members poor judgement in selling off their sites to foreign agency which once attempted to do business in Ghana but was chased away! The signs on the OAAN horizon is quite ominous. It is also quite unfortunate that both Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria, (AAAN) and Advertisers Association of Nigeria ADVAN as well as Media Independents Association of Nigeria (MIPAN) and APCON are unperturbed about the unfolding sad saga in OAAN. These sectoral groups appear to have left OAAN in the lurch and pretend as if whatever affects one does not affect all.
The impression being created in all of this is that the entire industry is in disarray. As stated by Chinua Aschebe in his classic novel, Things Fall Apart “Turning and turning in the widening gyre; The falcon cannot hear the falconer, Things fall apart The Centre Cannot hold; mere anarchy is losed upon the world”
In order that the narratives in this classic novel does not befall the OOH industry in Nigeria, all relevant stakeholders must rally to rescue the sector which is on a one hundred percent over-drive to the abyss. A stitch in time they say saves nine!
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