APCON boss rolls out plans, as IMC practitioners call for growth-based regulations

The Registrar and Chief Executive of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria, (APCON) Olalekan Fadolapo has reeled out some of his plans on regulating and uplifting the standard of advertising practice in Nigeria.

Some of his plans include industry reform, solving tax-related issues, copyright issues, agencies pitching for government communications jobs, among others. He revealed these at the IMC Industry Grand Reception organised to honour him. The event was organised by brands and marketing publication, Brand Communicator in collaboration with the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN). Similarly, Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) practitioners tasked APCON to ensure that it adheres to growth based regulations that will help strengthen the industry rather than killing the industry businesses.

Commenting on the state of regulation in the country, Olalekan said, “Nigeria is the only country in Africa that practices double regulatory system as at today; we have the government regulatory system and self-regulatory system. In other markets, it is purely self-regulation. The sectoral group comes together to outline best business practices, they sign MOU and it becomes a law, but in Nigeria, we always find it difficult to conclude that process.”

Therefore, he said that he is working on how to bring the sectoral group to work together, in the interest of having an industry all can be proud of.

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On the industry reform, “Again the industry reform has been a major challenge. The industry reform can create jobs, the industry reform will improve the Internal Generated Revenue (IGR) of APCON and the government, and it will help us stabilise our industry. I spoke to the president of all the sectoral groups and they all agreed we need to go ahead with the industry reform,” he explained.

He added that the Minister of Information and Culture,

Lai Mohammed has already approved it but there are some challenges that need to be taken care of before the industry review is fully implemented which include court cases.

In another vein, he said he is in talks with Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and they plan to set up a help desk for the advertising industry to listen and ensure that issues that relate to the industry are resolved, adding that some of the issues are double taxation; application of withholding tax and others. He said those that do not practice advertising may not understand the fundamentals, stating that the withholding tax should be applied to the net income.