Scrap States regulatory agencies, Adgozo boss advocates

A veteran outdoor advertising practitioner, Honourable Chike Anyaonu, has advocated for the scrapping of the legislative provisions empowering state governments in the country to establish regulatory agencies for outdoor advertising.

Speaking in an exclusive with MARKETING EDGE in Lagos, Anyaonu, managing director at Adgozo Limited, a leading outdoor advertising agency in Nigeria also advised stakeholders and operators across the country’s outdoor advertising industry to come together and form a united front to fight against the various challenges threatening the growth of the business especially, multiple taxation by governmental agencies.

According to him, the Schedule 4 of the Nigerian Constitution places squarely the regulatory exercise of outdoor adverting practice in the country on local government authorities, hence the powers being exercised by state governments in creating state agencies for outdoor advertising regulation are illegal and, to that extent, they should be scrapped.

He maintained that the creation of outdoor regulatory agencies for outdoor advertising by several state governments in the country amounted to a total usurpation of the powers of the local governments as enshrined in the constitution and this, he said, must be abolished.

Making specific reference from to Lagos State where the Government established LASAA, the veteran practitioner described the trend as an ugly development which has continued to be replicated in several other states in the country.

In his words, “What they did or are trying to do and are still doing today, to my mind, did not conform with what is done to enable practitioners to continue practicing in a conducive environment. That of Lagos was like somebody who was trying to do a witch hunt’, adding, “The law that established LASAA should be challenged in the Law court. I am telling you because it eroded the functions of the local government. It, in a way, usurped the functions of the local governments, and placed it on LASAA that is a State agency, now the local governments then are no longer doing anything relevant”.

Concluding, Anyaonu emphasized that “Schedule 4 of the constitution says functions of the Local Government shall be to control and regulate Outdoor advertising; to my mind the control and regulation should begin and stop with setting the standards of the boards where they should be, locations, the formats, and the fidelity of those boards so that they don’t fall, they can stand the text of time, so that they don’t become a nuisance or constitute a threat to the environment; and not to use it to make money for government, having revenue generation or drive at the back of the mind”.