President, Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria (OAAN), Mr Emma Ajufo, in this chat with Akin Adewakun, bares his mind on a wide range of industry issues, insisting on a governing board for the Lagos State Signage and Advertisement Agency (LASAA) and a technocrat as its chief executive for it to function effectively. Excerpts.
Our grouse with LASAA
THE issues are there. The association I lead and the agency that the former LASAA boss led are coming from different backgrounds. LASAA is supposed to be standard bearers, standard setters. But, instead of setting standards, they compete in the arena with us.
Two, they don’t really understand the business. If their statutory roles were to set standards and regulate, their area of interests would not be IGR. Unfortunately, we see them as being driven by money. Our argument is this: create the environment and every other thing will follow. If the right environment is there, the money they are asking for will come.
Three, charging us on vacant boards is another issue we feel strongly about. Our understanding of the LASAA law is that you are supposed to pay from earnings that you get. But they feel that once you’ve been allocated a space, whether it is occupied or not, you pay.
Another grouse we have with the agency is its concession of major roads in the metropolis, including federal roads. We believe before you can concession such roads, you must have the landlord’s consent. We say it is wrong, especially when the Federal Government has published a caveat, advising people not to touch the roads. Lagos still went ahead to give us letters to vacate the roads, for new people to take over, all in the name of concession.
Our billboards now beyond the reach of small businesses
Before the advent of LASAA, we had all manners of people who patroniSed our services. Fashion designers and other petty business operators were on the platforms. But today, you can count the number of small businesses on our platforms, because they suddenly became too costly for people to come on. If people don’t have business, how can they advertise on our platforms? We feel strongly that government should be interested in us because we create employment and should not drive us away. We have over 100 members practising outdoor advertising in Lagos and with this concession, they are going to throw all of us out of business.
What the new LASAA boss must possess
We advise the forward-looking governor to put not just political consideration as the top priority in choosing the next LASAA MD. Such person appointed should be a professional, a core technocrat.
Need for a board for LASAA
I think it has become imperative to have a board for LASAA, as spelt out in the law setting it up. If the board is in place, there is no way one person can take a decision and ram it down the throats of the whole industry. We also believe that even if he brings a good man there, the system can corrupt him. So, as he puts him there, let him also put a board in place so that the board can supervise. By the time we have a fit and proper MD and a board in place, we’ll have a good environment to operate. We’ll have diverse opinions that will assist the government in taking crucial decisions. We welcomed the last MD, believing him to be one of us, but he turned out not to be. For instance, we had an agreement that we should be paying 20 percent on vacant boards with his predecessor, but he failed to honour it. He even told us to go to court to challenge some of these things. So I feel strongly that once somebody is not checked, the tendency to allow power to get to his head and move out of track is there.
Our fears
Our fears now are that we are gradually getting to where we were before LASAA struck in 2017 and cleared all the billboards in Lagos. Remember one of the reasons LASAA came was that the environment was being clustered. We are beginning to see that now. Our appeal, therefore, to LASAA is to moderate the kind of billboards that we are seeing. Approvals for billboards are not within OAAN’s power. The association can only advise LASAA. LASAA seems to be approving too many sites on the roads again. The fear is that one day, a government would come again and say, ‘let’s clear Lagos’. We’ve had that experience with Raji Rasaki before, and also with LASAA when they cleared everything and practitioners had to start afresh. We don’t want a repeat of such trauma for anybody.
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