BrandiQ Report
The Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) has risen in strong criticism of the Federal Government over what it identified as poor professionalism in the management process of the ravaging COVID-19 global health pandemic.
The Institute viewed that a global health pandemic of the magnitude of the COVID – 19 calls for so much of public concerns and as such it required the expertise of well trained and experienced professionals for effective management.
Chairman of Lagos Chapter of the Institute, Olusegun MacMedal who spoke with BrandiQ observed that despite repeated overtures by the institute made through its Consultancy arm, Public Relations Consultants Association of Nigeria (PRCAN) to offer free expertise in managing the pandemic, the government continued “to act alone”, pointing out that the situation at hand demanded more of private-sector inclusion to fight the pandemic.
According to him, the Public Relations Consultants Association of Nigeria had at the initial stage of the pandemic reached to the Presidential Task Force (PTF) for the management of the pandemic offering our services free of charge to the government, but as much as possible government is yet to really leverage our knowledge as PRCAN but continued to do doing things the way they use to do them.
He added that there is a need for government to embrace professionals to do their job, stressing that the only suitable thing is that they know that “round pegs are actually meant for round holes” hence it will not be nice for the government to kind of “do things alone”.
“They’ve tried as much as possible, but they will do a lot better if they will come and work with PR practitioners, and of course the government also needs to know that they need to patronize Nigerian consultants in this thing, they need local content and all of that. This is the time for the government to show that they are committed to all of that going forward”.
The institute boss who made a general assessment of industry operations especially since the outbreak of the pandemic five months ago in the country noted that COVID -19 experience had drastically changed the course of life and general way of doing things adding that practitioners needed to adapt to the new ways of life through embracing the digital platforms in their business executions.
He added that COVID-19 had brought new meaning to public relations practice adding that one major fallout of the pandemic was the fact that demand for public relations services had been on the rse in the period as compared to other communications services while expressing hopes that the trend continued even after the pandemic.
Commenting on the number of business losses to the industry owing to the pandemic, the institute boss noted that it was difficult to possibly quantify the number of losses in figure terms due to the challenge of data in the industry but insisted that the future of the industry revolves around adaptability in the usage of digital technology adding that businesses that must thrive in the current era must adapt to the digital space or perish.
