Raheem Akingbolu
The Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) has assured Nigerian consumers of sanity in the advertising landscape in 2017 to prevent deceitful campaigns that could wrongly affect consumers’ spending habit.
APCON’s registrar, Garba Bello Kankarofi told THISDAY in an exclusive interview in Lagos that the council is aware that consumer spending is the backbone of the nation’s economy, which informs why all hands must be put on the deck to protect their rights.
He admitted that advertisement has a strong impact on the consumer’s choice and that true advertisements which are in conformity with realities make the consumers evaluate selection options for purchasing or using the advertised goods or services.
The APCON boss pointed out that the council is committed to see that advertising codes that are related to essential areas like; children’s advertising and food, drug and health are not abused.
“Nigeria vast market requires an equally vast regulatory structure that governs the manufacture, distribution, and sale of consumer products. Most of the time, advertising enhances market performance by providing useful information to consumers and by enabling firms to promote the attributes of their products and services and, thereby, to compete better with each other. On the other hand, advertising may adversely affect market performance when businesses use it to transmit deceptive or fraudulent messages on which reasonable consumers are induced to rely to their detriment. When this happens, we tend to refer to the result as “market failure,” he said.
Kankarofi pointed out that untrue advertisements will have a reverse role with reflection of untrue affairs, adding that the role of advertisements and its effectiveness on consumer’s right of choice are from the undeniable realities.
While commending registered advertising practitioners in Nigeria for being law abiding, Kankarofi stressed the fact that APCON has a statutory committee, the Advertising Standards Panel, which vets all advertisements exposed in all media, whether it is radio, television, newspaper, outdoor and flyers.
Speaking on the size of the industry, he put the number of the registered practitioners in Nigeria to be in excess of four thousand while corporate firms licensed by the Council so far are said to be over 250.
The APCON CEO, however pointed out that these figures fluctuate as new practitioners are registered – almost every quarter and as some hitherto registered ones drop out by virtue of their failure to live up to their practice obligations.
