Spokespersons must integrate nation building in public communication

Dr Ike Neliaku, fnipr, is the 15th president and chairman of the Council, Nigerian Institute of Public Relations. In this interview, he speaks on the essence of organising the spokespersons’ summit and the need for a charter to guide it. This will be the second edition of the Spokesperson Summit, what is it all about?  […]

Dr Ike Neliaku, fnipr, is the 15th president and chairman of the Council, Nigerian Institute of Public Relations. In this interview, he speaks on the essence of organising the spokespersons’ summit and the need for a charter to guide it.

This will be the second edition of the Spokesperson Summit, what is it all about? 

When we came in as the new Council of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) we discovered a lot of gaps in various areas of public communication. One of those areas was the issue of the place of spokespersons in national development. We discovered that most spokespersons did not realise the weight of their duties and the role that they play in building the nation. Everyone may be an expert in speaking for his or her organisation or principal but how do they add value to nation building? How do they drive the conversation in a manner that will be pro-Nigerian? To help us in building ourselves as Nigerians and not divisions on fault lines.

So, we felt that this is a very essential sector in nation building. 

• UniAbuja promotes 45 to professorial rank
• APC chieftain urges Tinubu to tackle upsurge in kidnapping

Secondly, we also discovered that some of these people who claim to be spokespersons are really ill-informed to the responsibilities and duties of spokespersons as a professional sectoral group. They are not well-trained to understand the trend to be equipped with the right tools and mechanics of being effective spokespersons, we saw it clearly that they were not able to engage in promoting the essence of their principals and their organisations.

For instance, a spokesperson at a very high level was always goofing and the NIPR was often questioned on why we allowed this to go on? We responded that we didn’t do the appointment and we have drawn attention to the quackery of this person, and so on. So, we felt we needed to establish a platform to help spokespersons after the episode.

You integrated integrity into the theme of this year’s conversation, what is the place of integrity in public communication? 

I learned from one of my bosses in the Ministry of Information that integrity is a big asset. If you joke with your integrity, it will soon be like a bank account that is in red. So, your integrity is a serious asset you must cultivate and if you don’t have integrity, you lack the moral persuasion to speak to anybody. So, once it is not there, people will not believe you.

The whole essence of integrity is that if you don’t have it, people will not believe you. The essence of appointing a spokesperson is somebody who bears the face of an organisation and engages with the public on behalf of the organisation and individual as the case may be. If that person lacks integrity, it tells on the person he is speaking for. That’s why if you go back, some people who have prized themselves as spokespersons, and you check, it gets to a point that nobody takes their words seriously. Some of them start very well but along the line, they began to talk anyhow. They lost their integrity, so people no longer take them seriously any time they speak on any matter.

One of the successes of last year’s summit was the call for a charter or a code for spokespersons, what value will this document bring?

This is a document that will help people to be guided and guarded in doing their work and doing it very well. A charter is a statement of belief that we want to guide us. So, we are now saying for spokespersons, adopt this as your charter. This is what we guide you because in that document, you will see principles across sectors the way it is done in other parts of the world.

In that same document, you will see things that will be like tips for you. For instance, one of the areas we treated is managing, in quote, difficult principals. It’s one of the things that gives spokespersons nightmares.

When you have a principal that is very difficult to manage, how do you manage the principal? When you have a principal that wants you to do the wrong thing, that is very unethical, how do you manage? And so on. It is in that charter. 

Then the second part of it is a practice code, which says, this is how you have to do these things. If you are not doing it this way, then you have not subscribed to the essential elements of best practices in what you are doing, and there could be penalties and so on. 

It also helps principals to measure performances of their spokespersons. So, it is no longer one way, it is both ways. The spokesperson is measuring his own performance by himself and the principal is measuring the performance of the spokesperson. In that way, management, monitoring, and mediation become easier. 

Once this charter is out, does it give room for review to accommodate new dynamics in the profession?

Yes, the document will be revised from time to time. That’s why it is not only NIPR that is issuing it. It is being issued by the sector, from where spokespersons usually emerge from. NIPR, as public relations people, journalists, editors, broadcasters, even banks, that’s why you have numerous of them endorsing the document. We have about six or seven of them that have endorsed it. You have the Nigeria Union of Journalists that have endorsed it, the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers, Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria, Society for Broadcasters of Nigeria, Professional Broadcasters of Nigeria and Association of Corporate Affairs Managers in Banks, spokespersons in banks and financial institutions, have all endorsed it but we are waiting for the endorsement of the Nigerian Guild of Editors.

All of us are issuing this charter and practice code to Nigerians on the 15th of April. The Chief Spokesperson of the Federation, that’s the speaker of the 10th House of Representatives, is the one who is unveiling it to demonstrate that it is not a joke.

Reputation is one of the greatest challenges we have in our country today. How do you intend to handle this in line with your constitutional mandate? 

When your reputation is low and will be of no repute. What that means is that we, as a people, must celebrate reputation, that is the core element of the practice of public relations. perception management and reputation building.

These are the two critical elements of our profession because anybody who is managing your image is managing your reputation and before the image is made, perception is felt, so if somebody is perceived as a perpetual latecomer to events, then he now earns the reputation of a latecomer.

When we were given mandate by the Federal Republic of Nigeria through Decree 16 of June 1st, 1990, and then followed up with Act of National Assembly, cited as CAP N114, Act of National Assembly 2004, we then realised that the government, as it were, takes the issue of reputation very seriously, if you look at our Act, it says anybody who is practising public relations under any name, under any guise, for commercial or gainful purposes whatsoever, who is not registered or certified by the NIPR, is bringing himself out for criminal prosecution.

That’s how serious it is and it is realised that if you neglect this profession, you will not build the right conversation, you will not raise the right credibility index that is required and you will not be able to measure what happens with the reputation of that country. So, that’s how serious it is.

And then it now goes further to say that such a person, when tried and found guilty, will be jailed with an option of fine, or jailed completely and fined. And then it goes further to say that if anyone employed that person, the employer is liable to the same offence as the person that was hired. It didn’t stop there as the federal government went on to say that because of the importance of this profession, we are going to nominate five people into the governing council of the institute.

So, there are 17 elected members with five appointed members appointed through the honourable minister of information, because of that, we have recently initiated the Nigeria Reputation Management Group, which is a group that we have put together. It was unveiled on the 15th of October, 2024. Part of the outcome of that unveiling is that 15th of October each year will now be marked as Nigeria Reputation Day.

And at that unveiling, the minister of information was there as chief host. The minister of foreign affairs was there as a special guest of honour and the reason is very simple.

The minister of foreign affairs is in charge of building our international reputation, managing it at governmental level. The minister of information is responsible for managing our national and domestic reputation at governmental level. And then he has his counterparts at the state levels, commissioners of information, and so on and so forth.

Have you done any analysis to see how effective this could be in tackling quackery in the profession?

Well, I wouldn’t say that we have done analysis in terms of scientific survey. We have not done that. But what we have done is to really engage in resolving the issues of quackery. Every profession has quacks. Once a profession is lucrative, you have quacks. Why don’t you have quacks in truck pushing? It doesn’t exist, because the value is not high. But you have quacks in medicine, pharmacy, public relations, and so on, because it’s a beautiful profession.

What we have done is advocacy which we discovered that the one major solution to it is to build a robust partnership. So, we began to reach out to the Nigerian Union of Journalists, because they are our sister organisation. We discovered that most of them mistakenly think that they are authorised to practice public relations, and they veer into it. But we sat down at the leadership level to look at it. And at the end of the day, we agreed that we are one, doing the same work as it were, but the law is the law, and we are law-abiding people.

We made a 50% waiver to every journalist that decides to join the NIPR. And I must use this opportunity to pay tribute, tremendous tribute, to the leadership of Nigerian Union of Journalists to help their members to professionalise in public relations.

Beyond reputational management, what other things are in store for spokespersons during the summit? 

Well, we have a very interesting dynamic. For the first time, when we had the first one, we brought in a clinic, manned by presidential spokespersons. This year, we say that the biggest challenge of our spokespersons is in the public arena, and that is the issue of public communication. So, we invited all the former ministers of information to come under what we call the Information Ministerial Clinic. So, they are coming to spend time with us in sharing their experiences, what they have seen in office, how they were able to manage difficult situations, and came out of it successfully.

And as a result of that, we are bringing people from these areas. That’s why we brought in ministers to have a clinic with commissioners of information and other spokespersons in the public. And then, we have other things like, from local to global, elevating Nigerian brands through strategic storytelling.

Also, we are looking at the issue of inclusive communication for managing diversity and national cohesion. You know that one of the challenges we are having at this time is the issue of inclusivity. We are not inclusive in our communication strategy, appointments and the way we relate with one another.

Nigeria recently won the hosting right to host the World Public Relations Forum (WPRF), what does this portend for the country?

It is a great thing because for the first time, we will be bringing public relations experts, not just practitioners, but experts from all over the world to come to Nigeria, to come and see us as we are wonderful people and celebrate the biggest nation in Africa. It is an opportunity for us to reinvent ourselves and promote ourselves to the global community. Before, we used to go to them to lobby for us. Now, they are coming to us to see things for themselves. It is a great opportunity. This is the first time it is coming to Nigeria and the second time it is coming to Africa.

We fought for it because it almost slipped our hands to South Africa, but the God of Nigeria prevailed and we are hosting it. So, it is a wonderful opportunity for the global community to be in Nigeria for one week, from the 16th of November to the 22nd of November, 2026. But we have already started planning because it’s a very big thing.

We have already inaugurated the National Planning Committee that will help us to drive that process and we are bringing everybody on board. And we told them that we must have the biggest, brightest, and boldest hosting of WKRF, such that they have never seen. We want people to go back to their countries, saying, how come they have been unfair about Nigeria? And that’s where one of the sayings we’re adopting, our mantra is no wahala.

This summit, this forum, we hold that there will be no wahala in Nigeria. Anybody who is coming into Nigeria for this must go with that idea, with that mantra, that there is no wahala in Nigeria. Everything must work and work very well, so that when they go back and they say, how was it? They say, no wahala.