Constant engagement with government, key to outdoor advertising survival in Nigeria —OAAN President, Babatunde Adedoyin

In this interview with Akin Adewakun, president of Outdoor Advertisers Association of Nigeria (OAAN), Mr Babatunde Adedoyin speaks on issues confronting outdoor advertising business in Nigeria, while stressing the need for constant stakeholders’ engagement for the business to survive in the country. Excerpts:

WHY I promised to deepen the bond between  members and governments

As an outdoor practitioner, in any part of the world, not only in Nigeria, you have to have constant engagement with the government, the reason being that we use their right of ways to erect our billboards.  If, for example, they want to expand the road, build recreation centres and others, the government can ask you to move the board to another place. We therefore  discover that constant engagement is key. First, to ensure that the regulators that are appointed are practitioners who understand the profession, because in most cases, the laws are good,  but the implementation of the law is always the challenge. For instance, a regulator who  is also a practitioner will understand that besides seeing the outdoor ad business as a source of huge IGR, it should also be seen in terms of values and aesthetics it adds to the community where such billboards are sited. Outdoor can also be used to measure how well a government is doing. In a nutshell, we discover that  we have to continue to engage the government, we have to continue to educate them, we have to let them know that it is in their interest to put professionals in charge of regulation, so that all stakeholders in the practice  will be on the same wavelength and it will be a win-win situation. I don’t know whether you are aware that after a long argument and discussions, we were able to get  a 30 per cent reduction on our rates on our billboards in Lagos, from July this year. On the LED we got 35 per cent reduction, while on the static structure we got 30 per cent discount.

We also got 80 per cent discount on our vacant boards. Before July this year, they had been charging us 100 per cent on those  same boards. So since government is the landlord,  we will  continue to engage them. And once we engage, and we are lucky to have people that understand the business as it is, the better for us. We are not saying we don’t want to pay government, but we don’t also want government to short-change us. Government should actually be helping small businesses to grow because employment of 15/20 people takes a lot of people off labour market. We sincerely hope that government will realise this and continue to support small and medium businesses.

Industry debt

They are still there. In LASAA’s wisdom, they’ve decided to waive some of these debts, in outdoor. But  I think we should arrive at the midpoint decision where we can start on a new slate. Let them write off these debts because the money was not earned in the first place.  Truly if the agency was sure they earned the money, they wouldn’t have given such a generous discount.

Debt owed members for APC campaign in the state

The APC money has not been paid up till now. There are lot of technicalities in it.  The challenge comes from the fact that the decision then to use our boards by the party was verbal. It was a gentleman’s agreement, no contract papers were signed. Unfortunately, the exit of the former LASAA boss and the coming on board of a new one, who is a lawyer, exposed this. Though we can prove that we actually worked for the party, but the fact remains  that there was no contract firming the whole process up.

Decline in outdoor spend in 2017

I think this is not peculiar to outdoor. Even press, I mean the print also experienced the same thing. It could be a function of the economy. A lot of corporations had to  cut down on ad budgets.

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Managements are now looking at some of these things very carefully, to make sure that the money that is budgeted for ad is not going into people’s pockets. But  I think things have  improved in the last quarter of this year.  Apart from political activities, even brands are coming up.

Checking the activities of quacks

We are very much concerned about all these things, too. Unfortunately, I believe APCON is in the best position to answer this question because this is the body that is saddled with the responsibility of regulating the practice in Nigeria. It is the one that should look at the content, it is the body that will certify practitioners, it is the one to arrest those practising illegally. OAAN does not have the power to arrest. Even where they say ‘don’t paste posters’ they still go ahead and do that. All these things we always point their attention to.

An APCON without board

But you are aware we’ve been pushing government hard on this. Even during Jonathan’s  era we didn’t have board. There was a time we were given a pharmacist and we rejected. The law that established APCON said the chairman must be a practitioner. When we were eventually given a qualified chairman in the person of Udeme Ufot, it didn’t last for long before the council was dissolved by the board. Another attempt at constituting the board by this government was rejected because they weren’t giving us a practitioner. So it’s been long the body has been without a practitioner. Our position is that they should return Udeme Ufot because he has not even done up to a year.

Our plans at strengthening state chapters

I have to be very honest with you,  I think everything still boils down to the issue of the economy. What the media planners do is to look at the primary markets and the secondary markets. The primary markets are Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt and others are just secondary. It also has to do with the purchasing power of people,what profits are they making from that region. So it’s a function of purchasing power and the profit they are making from those regions.

I’ll give you an example, if you go to some places in Abeokuta today, and you are looking for N1,500 recharge cards, you will not get. What they sell are the smaller denominations. They are what  the people there can afford, because basically, it’s a civil service state. They don’t want to hear it, but those of us in business know this. You cannot compare the purchasing power of the people in Ondo with  those in Lagos.