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APCON Sues For Standard Operating Framework For Ad Industry

The new administration of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) have disclosed it is working towards the goal of achieving  standard operating framework which would henceforth guide business relationships amongst stakeholders in Nigeria’s advertising industry.

The Council said it is committed to fully implementing total reforms in the advertising industry, putting into consideration Federal government’s new policy on ease of doing business as well as  the amended Company And Allied Matters Act (CAMA).

The Registrar of the Council, Dr Olalekan Fadolapo who disclosed this in an interview said the  APCON new administration under his leadership is working currently in consultation with various sectorial associations in the industry with a view to identifying growth impediments and the need to create standard operating framework to guide business relationships amongst industry stakeholders including the clients, agencies and media vendors. 

The Council boss observed that in other climes, there exists a standard operating framework that guides the relationship of every stakeholder in the industry via-a-vis, client and agency as well as between agency and the vendors, noting that in Nigeria, we do not have anything we can hold on to. 

To this end, he said the new administration is looking towards having an APCON that has a standard operating manual for the entire advertising industry, including even the issue of contracts and payment policy, in line with its vision of making APCON a regulator that will provide a healthy environment for all competitors within the Ad industry.


He added “For you to apply for corporate license before, you needed to be a company with a minimum of two shareholders. The amended Company And Allied Matters Act said it is one shareholder, and there is also a provision for liability partnership, which was not there before. We are looking at the new provision of CAMA and how we are going to situate our own industry reform into this and how we are going to make it better”

Responding to enquiries as to the emergence of social media and the sudden offensive adverts that has become  the norm and the Council’s plans in addressing the menace, Fadolapo explained that the trend  became highly prevalent in the period that APCON existed having not a governing Council and Registrar adding that just like in other government agencies, APCON was caught unawares by advent of the social media.

The Registrar of the Council, Dr Olalekan Fadolapo

According to him, while it was impossible to engage in warfare with social media space owners, the Council would rather focus its lenses on regulating digital creative agencies and media buyers who are creators of advertisement materials that get exposed on the social media space.

Registrar stressed that: “We can only regulate the digital creative agencies or the digital buying agencies. We cannot regulate the digital space owners. But what are we going to do? We need to engage the social media space owners. We are going to identify and take a pitch to them” “We will not engage them in warfare because we want to regulate. We will sit everybody down and ask questions, we will plead with them. It is going to be a win-win situation. It’s not because we have the Federal might behind us. What we want to do is to sit down with each and every one of them and discuss where the infractions are coming from”

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