KEVIN JOHNSON-AZUARA, head, investor relations & corporate communications at Axxela Limited, a natural gas shipper on the West African Gas Pipeline (WAGP), previously worked as a journalist and PR executive in the US and was a communications executive at Oando Plc. He shared some insights with CALEB OJEWALE on excelling as a media professional in the Nigerian landscape, describing his communication career as focused on making an impact on society. Excerpts:
You have spent your entire career in communications (from the US to Nigeria), so I am assuming there must have been a passion from the beginning. What was the motivation for you?
The inclination after my first degree (in Political science) was to go straight to law school, but I was offered a graduate scholarship within the field of communications. There were other prestigious institutions that I could have gone to, but I chose to stay at my alma mater, which is Howard University. Within the sphere of communication, studying it from such a theoretical point of view, with a vastly experienced and knowledgeable faculty, you get to know a lot from case studies, theories to go by, research papers, and experiencing internships with leading public relations organizations such as Ogilvy and Edelman.
These experiences really brought to the power of communications to the fore for me. So, I think my education played a huge part in my practical and early experiences in the PR industry, and also pushed me along the path which I find myself on today.
After schooling in the US, you worked there briefly before coming back to Nigeria. What informed that decision?
I have always regarded myself as a Nigerian first and foremost, and my diverse ethnicity, Igbo and Fulani, has always afforded me a multi-layered perspective and approach. I always wanted to make an impact within the communications sphere in Nigeria. In speaking with a lot of people, there was a lot of talk around the change that we, my generation, could drive and obviously that change cannot be driven from afar. You have to be on ground and be willing to toil and do what you can, so that was how my journey to come from the US down to Nigeria started.
I was afforded the opportunity to come and work with Oando, a prestigious indigenous player in the oil and gas space. Oando is an amazing and very aspirational brand for a lot of people. If I did not understand that fully prior to joining the company, when I joined the company, it definitely hit home. So it was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down or I would have questioned myself if I never accepted. So I transcended
that, I accepted the opportunity and I came over to Nigeria in 2012.
Would it be fair to say the offer was probably better than anything you could have gotten in the US at
the time?
It actually was not. I actually took a pay cut to come to Nigeria, but I think it was just understanding where I was at that time in my life and the challenges I was willing to encounter. I wanted to take up a challenge and not have to look at myself, two to four years down the line and be like ‘I wonder if I could have risen to the challenge.’
How would you describe working as a communications person in the oil and gas industry in Nigeria? As a professional, what do you think you were able to accomplish that other aspiring professionals can learn from?
I think the first thing before you even start to speak about accomplishments or achievements, you have to understand the traits you have to bring to the job. A part of you has to be an amazing communicator, you have to be someone that has a tremendous tenacity.
What does it mean to be tenacious? Tenacious being able to go from point A to point B with relentless strength. You just keep pushing on, and you are never tired. Even if you are tired mentally, you have to be your number one cheerleader and tell yourself you are not tired. So being tenacious, being relentless, being resilient, I think these are some of the traits that come into play and I say these things because the oil and gas space is very unpredictable. A good example I can give is when we had the last drop in oil prices in 2014/205, and we saw how severely it affected not just Nigeria, but the global economic terrain.
The preparedness of a communications professional has to be similar to the efficacy and symmetry required when preparing for surgery. This trait is required to effectively manage the crisis and to always be able to put forward an endearing message or narrative that people can always recall or remember. The underlining goal of all these is ensuring that your organisation or your brand, that is if you have reached that spectre, is easily recognizable. That the brand recall is high and the brand affinity is one that people feel deeply about.
Can you give an instance or more that you think there was something, not necessarily a scandal, but something of public concern that had to be managed and what exactly you did? Any communication strategy that stood out?
I think one scenario that is easy to address, is the idea of oil bunkering. Usually, people within the Lagos Metropolis tend to forget that due to issues in the Niger Delta, power supply is also affected when gas supply is affected. They forget that the supply of gas is only secured if we can properly address what is going on in the Niger Delta. So we have had several occasions that we have had to come up with a strategy to actively manage critical stakeholders. From clients to regulators, even one’s employees, information is crucial, but it is also sensitive at the same time and there are certain terminals or assets that we may not be able to speak about. For instance, once inflow is disrupted from a place, we may not get the required gas to power certain distributing companies over here (in Lagos).
We had to actively create strategies whether from a PR point of view or engaging media and ensuring that appropriate tactics follow in telling the narrative as it should be told, not putting any spin to it (and I hate that word) but again actively engaging and telling the focal points of the story.
Using this oil bunkering for instance, which affects gas supply that in turn affects power generation, and of course the average Nigerian consumer, how were you able to tell any of those narratives?
Again, in a clime such as Nigeria, the key to doing a lot of this is engagement of the media. The more we engage the gatekeepers in this information flow, as the fourth estate, as you will in any democracy, the better we can communicate impact figures and impact scenarios. Also, educating people internally within our organization, so they have a firmer understanding of what they are doing on a day-to-day basis and how what their initiatives and innovative is bolstering the business enterprise.
If there are any issues regarding supply, we would work with the sales and marketing team to get information out as quickly as possible to customers and environs that would be immediately impacted. It’s a thing of looking through a strategy document, understanding who your stakeholders are, what their touch points of engagement are; are these people you can easily reach digitally? Are these people you can easily reach via traditional media via print or television?
Of course, another thing from my experience in Nigeria is that drawn out strategies do not work. It’s very quick, very almost machinegun like. People deal with bite-sized information. They want the information now. The longer you dwell on that piece of the information you have, you have already lost the war or battle before it’s already begun. The quicker you can get a compelling narrative out to your key audiences, the greater your potential reach, frequency, and resonance.
What would you say to the average fresh graduate or some other young person that is looking to build a career in communications and/or public relations?
I would say to whoever is trying to break-in, never believe that whatever you are doing is too little. There was a time in my life literally what I was doing was consulting for people and the Chief Editor for a politics website. It made me an even better writer and editor, able to dissect large chunks of information into factual
I meet a lot of young people who may be waiting for an opportunity and I ask them; so what are you doing at the moment? And they’re like, oh, I’m still trying to get into this. And, I’m like, ok. But what else, are you writing? Are you reading? Are you attending workshops and networking? What is the last book you read? A communications professional needs to garner information on numerous sectors; you must hunger and thirst for knowledge: that is one thing you have to understand. If you learn about Michelle Obama’s new book; why are people talking about it? Don’t ask that question. You should be able to answer that question. You should have read the book, find the book, read it; read a lot, become a news junkie. If you don’t know a word, look it up and understand how and why it could be useful in your verbiage. Develop smart habits that will be useful when your career lifts off. Never act as if you are the smartest person around. There is already a fundamental problem if you are (always) the smartest person in a room.
