Alhaji Mohammed Ahmed Abdullahi who was recently re-elected as president of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), the professional body of qualified PR practitioners renews his commitment to ensuring professionalism while creating platforms that would take the institute to the next level.SPEAKING shortly after he was re-elected for another two years in office at the Tahir Guest Palace in Kano, venue of the 2011 national convention of the institute, Abdullahi listed the scheduling of public relations as a promotional cadre at both the state and federal levels as one out of several steps so far taken to achieve the goal.He said: 'In the last council we had succeeded in moving it up to the ratification level by the national council on establishment and once it is ratified, public relations would also occupy the same position like any other professions such that which ever ministry you go, you will find director of administration, director of public relations and director of planning.'Listing the benefits derivable from the initiative, he said: 'The bandwagon effect is thatit will create more jobs for public relations practitioners and it will also give people the opportunity to come and register for those who are qualified because Act No 16 of 1990 mandate the institute to regulate the practice of public relations in Nigeria by setting standards,skills and knowledge to be acquired by would-be interested members.Now with this, nobody who is not a member of the NIPR would be employed to performpublic relations jobs and it would also make what we fought hard to achieve, which is the upgrading of the directorate of public relations to be very effective.'Continuing, he noted: 'We have already succeeded in making the federal executive council to upgrade the department in eleven federal ministries into full directorates of public relations with a full director at the helm.Already, the Head of Federal Service has declared vacancies in this directorate. The aim here is to ensure that it trickles down to states and local government levels. So these two key areas are very challenging to us because they are in a way going to institutionalise the institute in the country by making it very effective and efficient because by the time you move to that, people would come and you are going to have well qualified people registering.'This is going to be fought alongside the other aspect of our Act, which is the enforcement of provisions in sections 10, 11 and 13 of Act No 16 which outlines parameters for the constitution of an investigative panel and disciplinary tribunal which will be set by the Attorney General of the Federation under the provisions of that law.'We are going to use this law to make sure that we enforce the provision which prohibits the practice of public relations in Nigeria without registration with the NIPR. There are very many senior officers occupying strategic positions of public relations that are not registered with this institute, so I will use this opportunity to advise them in their own interest and in the interest of the responsibility they are performing to strive hard to register with the institute because we have provided a platform for them to take advantage of the accelerated training programme that we are running which will serve as a window of opportunity for them so that they can key in because we don't want to shut the door against them.'So, once they come and key in, we are going to certify them through the programme and then absorb them as members of the same NIPR family. We are giving this chance because we wanted to start the enforcement by July 2010, but we postponed it because we wanted todeliberately give people the chance to utilise this opportunity to be on board.'With the scheduling and upgrading we are going to, by the first quarter of this year, after we have given the certification to the first set by March 2012, we will start. We have already constituted the enforcement committee and we are going to start the enforcement in a big way.'For those who are not registered, we regard them as quacks. And we want people to come and comply with the law of the land by registering to belong, so that we can together uplift the public relation profession and make sure we strengthen our institute and theresponsibilities we are performing in our various places of work.'He also spoke on other programmes targetted at adding value to the image of Nigeria and the practice of public relations.'We are also going to do programme that will add value to those that are practicing as public relation practitioners. We have come up with a programme that we call Members Professional Development Programme (MCPD), which we designed to update the skills of our members to give them new techniques in the role of public relations. To this end, we have entered into collaborations with similar institutes such as the Chartered Institute of Public Relations of Great Britain, Public Relations Institute of South Africa, and that of America and we are going to combine the skills of these people and expertise, because they have more technical expertise than us in the area of public relations, even though we have some professionals that are very good and well educated with the deeper knowledge of PR practice.'We have discussed with all these platforms to join us in finding a forum whereby we can profess the profession of public relations and in making it relevant across the world. By doing this, we are going to project the image of Nigeria positively.'Since 2008, when we started struggling to achieve something in this area, we suffered a lotof problems but at the end of the day, we managed to make sure that we achieve something in this direction when the people from the UK, America and other countries started attending our programme here.'We also have to plan to ensure that we participate in the programme of running this country. The NIPR is the best face of democracy; we are not a labour union, a trade union. We are a professional institute that is supposed to x-ray the problems of the country.'So, we are going to form sub-committees that are going to look at the problems of the country and we would be channelling our solutions to the right authorities from federal, states and local government levels, not only at these levels but to international organisations like ECOWAS, OAU and the UN.'There are things that we can do that can impact positively on the people that areresiding in Africa, West Africa and the world over.'We have designed a proposal, which we are going to vigorously pursue. We have a proposal on a national reputation summit and in this tenure, we will make sure that it takes placebecause part of why we are organising this conference was to address these challenges. Now, we think it is time for us to move forward and convince all those stakeholders that we need to talk about these problems either ethnic,religious or social that had been dividing the people of this country such that relationship has broken down in the country.'We feel the only way the country can move forward to achieve the 2020 vision is to have its citizens that have nothing against each other in their hearts. We want to ensure that the citizenry relates peaceably with one another as brothers. We want people to start thinking as Nigerians because it is only when we think as Nigerians that we would drop all these ethno-religious and geo-political cleavages. As long as we hold on to this negative attitude, there is no way that Nigeria can move forward. If I am looking at an issue as a Bauchi man, then definitely when I goeverywhere I will be looking for resources to take to Bauchi. If I look at myself as Muslim, when I get there I will start looking for a Muslim. Same applies if I look at myself as a Hausa man and the moment we continue to look at thingsthat way in Nigeria, Nigeria is going to die. So, there is no way we will move forward unless and until we think like Nigerians. If I see any issue whether it borders on anywhere, I aggregate it based on merit, competence and ability,experience and technical know-how of the person that is going to execute that task.'Unlike what obtains elsewhere in countries like America and Britain, it is only in Nigeria that we think of where we are coming from and that is why our development has been truncated and we are going nowhere.'We have come up with a proposal for the first ECOWAS Public Relations conference; we are going to see how we are going to reach out to the ECOWAS commission and we are happy president Goodluck Jonathan is the ECOWAS president and we are going to work through theInformation Ministry to see how to actualise this.'There is also NEPAD that most of the people in this country are not aware of the tenets and philosophy behind it but yet most people don't know much about it. So, as part of our social responsibility to Nigerians, we intend to organise a first NEPAD public relation conference in Nigeria and we are going to work in tandem with the office of the special adviser to the president on NEPAD and we are going to key in organisations that are part of this programme so that we will be able to bring them together to tell Nigerians what this programme is all about.'We also factor in the fact that it is not only the national reputation summit that would address some of the key issues pervading this country, we also have a proposal on public relations, media and democracy and national stability which we are going to jointly do with the NUJ, Nigerian Guild of Editors, NIPR and the information ministry so that we can explore how we can tackle how this country is running forward and backward. We will not rest on our oars to ensure progress, peace and stability in the country. We feel the NIPR should be in the right frame to spearhead this kind of campaign because it is part of its responsibility.
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