We Can’t Continue Fighting, New ADVAN President O’tega Sues For Peace, Outlines Immediate Steps For New Executive Committee

In his first speech barely hours since his election and in a subsequent exclusive interaction with the media, newly elected President of the Advertisers Association of Nigeria (ADVAN), O’tega Ogra, struck a conciliatory tone toward the industry’s regulator, Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON), offering what can described as an olive branch while laying out a four-point agenda for his tenure.

Newly elected President of the Advertisers Association of Nigeria (ADVAN), O’tega Ogra, has extended an olive branch to the industry’s regulator,Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON), declaring that the sector cannot afford to remain locked in a cycle of litigation and confrontation, as he used his acceptance speech and a subsequent media briefing to signal a decisive shift toward dialogue.

Speaking shortly after his election, Ogra invoked a proverb to frame his approach to ADVAN’s long-running friction with its regulator: “There’s this saying that sometimes you can’t use the same weapons that you used to fight a war to solve the war.” He said his manifesto commitment to “reopen the books” was already in motion, adding, “Let’s see how we can get the people who consider themselves our enemies back to the table.”

The new President was careful, however, to frame the reset within existing legal boundaries. “We will do everything possible, but it must be done within the ambits of the laws and the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” he said, before addressing the regulator, the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria led by its Director-General, Fr. Olalekan Fadolapo directly in a moment that set the tone for his tenure: “I’m speaking to you directly, sir, and I know you’ll see this at some point. Let’s work together to ensure that the advertising space, the marketing space, can actually deliver value to Nigerians. It doesn’t pay anyone if we are not.”

He argued that continued conflict serves no one’s interest. “Not the corporates, not the SMEs, not the Nigerian people, and certainly not Africa for us to keep litigating and fighting,” Ogra said. “We are ready to meet you as partners. We are ready to meet you in an atmosphere of mutual respect, and if you can kindly just listen to us, we think we can help you regulate us better.”

But the peace overture came with a warning about ADVAN’s capacity to mobilise if pushed. “If you want to fight, I’m sure we have thousands of brand managers, hundreds of CMOs who will gladly put their bodies behind us,” he said. “But this is a call for peace, this is a call for collaboration, mutual understanding.”

Not Capitulation, Insists Ogra

Fielding questions from journalists after the speech, Ogra was pressed on whether his conciliatory posture amounted to ADVAN backing down from its running disputes with the regulator. He rejected that framing firmly. “It’s not capitulation,” he said. “It’s saying let us seek other avenues to have a sit-down with the regulator and see how we can work together in the best interest of not just advertisers, but the entire marketing industry as a whole.”

He acknowledged that ADVAN’s existing approach had yielded limited results. “We’ve tried something for a couple of years, and it’s not worked,” he admitted. “Maybe it’s high time we begin to look at other avenues of approaching the regulator.” He was, however, unequivocal that this did not mean ADVAN was walking away from its members’ interests: “We are not saying we’re going to do that… it’s our job as ADVAN to create the right enabling environment for those conversations, real conversations, that take into cognisance everyone’s interests.”

Asked directly whether his comments meant ADVAN would be returning to the negotiating table with the regulator even as a subsisting court matter runs its course, Ogra declined to be drawn into specifics on the litigation itself, citing sub judice restrictions, but insisted the two tracks were not mutually exclusive. “I’m not going to really comment on the case and court, because that would be sub judice,” he said. “What I’m saying is, two truths can coexist. We can have the court case going on, but we can also still do that in an atmosphere of dialogue, an atmosphere of mutual respect, an atmosphere of collaboration.” He added that ADVAN remained open: “We are not shutting the door to dialogue… we are ready for that if the regulator is, and I do hope they are ready to have this conversation with us.”

Four Priorities for the New Exco

Pressed on what members should expect from his administration, Ogra outlined four immediate priorities. First, he said ADVAN would “go back to the basics,” giving members a single channel to raise issues and scale ideas into initiatives with national impact.

Second, he announced plans to institutionalise ADVAN’s training programmes through a new Institute of Marketing and Brand Leadership, to be run under the ADVAN Business School. “We hope within the next few months the framework for that should be up,” he said.

Third, he reiterated that resetting relations with the regulator and other stakeholders would be central to his tenure, repeating that ADVAN “can’t keep litigating every single time” and must pursue approaches that deliver a “win-win for everyone.”

Fourth, Ogra announced that ADVAN would begin publishing an annual State of Marketing and Advertising Report for Nigeria, to quantify the sector’s contribution to GDP and the economy. “There are local lessons in Nigeria, there are local lessons in the work we do as brands that we believe the world needs to see, in a codified manner,” he said, adding that the association would also work to broaden its membership base “from those in school… to brand managers to our CMOs” and even CEOs.

Balancing the Presidency with a Day Job

Asked how he intended to manage the demands of the ADVAN presidency alongside his private-sector role, Ogra pointed to precedent within the association. “Everyone who has served on the ADVAN Executive Committee before has done it alongside their other job. We have done this work. We’ve continued to put in our own personal time, resources, energies into ADVAN,” he said. “If the founding fathers of ADVAN could do it then, why can’t we continue it now?”

He also paid tribute to the association’s administrative backbone, thanking “the ADVAN Secretariat, headed by our CEO, Ediwe Osea Idele,” whom he credited with managing the secretariat capably “for more than a decade” on behalf of successive executive committees.