THE sack of the former Managing Director of the Lagos State Signage and Advertisement Agency, Prince Adedamola Docemo, again, brought to the fore the knotty issues within the sector that would always constitute a ‘banana peel’ for holders of the exalted office.
And, unfortunately, the issues are legion!
For instance, it is an open secret that since its establishment in 2006, the relationship between the state’s regulatory agency and the practitioners, whose activities it is supposed to regulate, is far from being cordial. And the reasons are not far-fetched. They border on regulatory framework, which, practitioners believe, are skewed towards strangulating their businesses.
One of such regulations was the decision of the pioneer chief executive of the agency, Makanjuola Alabi, to remove and destroy every standing billboard in Lagos, in 2007.
While some practitioners agreed with Makanjuola’s argument on the need to sanitise the cityscape and the outdoor ad sector, not a few still believe it would have been handled differently, if ‘Mako’, as he was popularly called then had been a practitioner.
Another grouse against the agency is that it is fast deviating from its primary statutory role of regulating outdoor advertising industry.
“They are supposed to be standard bearers, standard setters. But they’ve left that standard, and are even competing in the arena.
They don’t really understand the business. If their statutory role is to set standards and regulate, their area of interests would not be IGR. We see them as being driven by money, but what we’ve always said to them is that create the environment and every other thing will follow,” argued Emma Ajufo, the president of the Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria (OAAN).
Ajufo, in an exclusive chat with Brands & Marketing, also underlines the issue of vacant board, which he stated, requires an individual, vast in the knowledge of the industry to handle. He stated that being asked to pay on vacant billboards, as the agency’s last chief executive had insisted, would only kill businesses.
“Our understanding of the LASAA law is that you are supposed to pay from the earning that you get. But they feel that once you’ve been allocated a space, whether it is occupied or not, you pay,” he stated.
The issue of concession of major roads, including those belonging to the Federal Government, to a select favoured few, also remains contentious among practitioners in the industry.
It’s on record that some outdoor practitioners in Lagos have been given till the end of the month to vacate some major roads, including the federal-owned, in the metropolis; as a result of such concession.
But, for many, it does not provide a level-playing field for every player in the sector, and if care is not taken may drive the nail into the coffins of some businesses in the sector.
While the need to appoint a new LASAA executive, capable of taking care of all these issues has become imperative, practitioners however, believe it should be taken a bit further. The state government should constitute a board for the agency, as statutorily required.
Having a board in place, they believe, will go a long way in checking the excesses of the chief executive.
Practitioners also list the need to bring back the old times, when outdoor signages were accessible to small and medium businesses in the state. Unfortunately, this class of businesses can no longer afford the luxury of the signages, since they have been priced beyond petty businesses.
“Before LASAA came, we had all manners of people who patronized our services. Fashion designers and others were on our platform. But today you can count the number of small businesses on our platforms, because they became suddenly too costly for people to come on. If people don’t have business, how can they advertise on our platforms?
“We feel strongly that the government which should be interested in us because we create employment, should not drive us away. We have over 100 members, practicing in Lagos, and with this concession, they are going to throw all of us out of business,” argued Ajufo.
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