The Registrar/CEO of APCON, Dr. Olalekan Fadolapo has disclosed that the council would be introducing a vetting regime from 1st of April this year to further regulatory and standardize advertising practice in Nigeria.
He also revealed that the council would be boosting the welfare of its members by starting up with a Life Insurance package for fellows of the council.
Fadolapo made this known at the APCON Fellowship Induction held at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Lagos.
According to him, “APCON would be introducing a new vetting regime with effect from 1st April 2022 where only licenced advertising organisations will be permitted to apply to the Advertising Standards Panel (ASP) for vetting. This is further to reduce unlawful and unethical practices and more so to encourage the businesses of APCON-licenced organisations.
“As an innovative way of encouraging the fellows of the profession, APCON has conducted research on the beneficial programmes that can sustainably improve the welfare of her members and has resolved to adopt and draw insurance policy to cover her members in specific areas. We will begin with the fellowship category and progress to cover other categories of membership. In addition, we will be developing a stronger capacity building programme which will be valuable to fellows and help stimulate interesting feedbacks to build a stronger advertising industry.”
He added that the commission is optimistic that the APCON Act before the National Assembly for amendment would be concluded soon.
“Most the challenges we encounter as a regulatory agency are due to inadequate legislative backup. This will hopefully abate soon. The APCON enabling Act’s amendment is at an advanced stage at the National Assembly and we are optimistic that a favorable passage of the law would be concluded before the end of June this year.”
At the induction ceremony, Fadolapo urged the newly inducted fellows to mentor younger practitioners in the interest of growing the industry, “As an obligation, I will like to implore the newly inducted fellows as well as other distinguished senior practitioners to kindly endeavour to pay the necessary practice fee due for their category and to participate actively in the training and professional development of both themselves and for the younger practitioners in the industry especially the ones organised by APCON.”