TheCable

Israel Opayemi, managing director of Chain Reactions Nigeria, a public relations and integrated communications consulting firm, was named PR practitioner of the year at the 2018 Lagos PR Industry Gala Awards (LaPRIGA).

The award ceremony was organised by the Lagos state chapter of Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR).

Opayemi dedicated the award to God and his team of “creative rebels”, saying the honour serves as motivation for him and the firm to improve.

“This is not just a recognition award; you have challenged me and my team tonight. And let me say before this circle of professionals that, we will continue to raise the bar of excellence,” he said.

“We will bring more honours to this great profession in our own lifetime.”

He thanked the state’s chapter of NIPR for the award and described LaPRIGA as a great initiative that promotes professional excellence among PR practitioners in Nigeria.

Muktar Sirajo, national president of NIPR, described LaPRIGA as one of the creative ways to keep PR practitioners on their toes while encouraging more professionals to aspire for excellence by ensuring they approach their works in a competitive manner.

He said the national leadership of NIPR is intensifying the fight against quackery as part of steps to ensuring standards and professionalism in the industry.

“The fight against quackery in the profession is still on. We don’t want to make a lot of noise about that because we don’t want to give away our strategy. But we are on top of it and very soon, we intend to visit the attorney – general of the federation who is mandated by the law to set up a tribunal to try people found to be practising public relations without licensing by the institute,” he said.

Also speaking, Kehinde Bamigbetan, Lagos commissioner for information and strategy, said public relations is a very important tool for the state government to effectively communicate its policies and programmes to residents and other stakeholders.

“It is always a real challenge every time when we have to convince over 20 million people to buy into our policies,” Bamigbetan said.

“I believe tonight, through the awards, we will see those whose experiments have worked so well that you can learn a few tricks and then try and use one or two in packaging our own policies in government.”