…As Umbrella Body Backs ARCON Council Inauguration, Defends AISOP, Urges ADVAN to Re-engage Industry Platforms
As the rift between the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON) and the Advertisers Association of Nigeria (ADVAN) deepens, Nigeria’s umbrella body for the advertising industry has stepped in to call the parties to the table.
The Heads of Advertising Sectoral Groups (HASG), led by Mr. Lanre Adisa, who also serves as President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN), has issued a statement noting its concerns on the growing crisis and committing to facilitate consultative meetings between ADVAN and ARCON as a path toward resolution.
The statement which was signed off by Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN), the Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria (OAAN), the Experiential Marketers Association of Nigeria (EXMAN), the Media Independent Practitioners Association of Nigeria (MIPAN), and the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON) called on both sides to return to the table to chart a path forward for the industry.
The backdrop to HASG’s intervention is that ADVAN, through its Board of Trustees, published an open letter to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, raising a series of grievances against ARCON’s recent reforms. ARCON responded recently in a press statement that rejected every major claim in ADVAN’s letter, accused the association of spreading misinformation and disinformation, challenged the ADVAN leadership over the veracity of its membership figures and industry spend claims, and pointedly rebuked the Aare Fatai Odeshile-led Board of Trustees for lending their names to what it described as a “misleading and deceptive” publication.
Our Position on ARCON Council, AISOP, Dialogue – HASG
On the question of ARCON’s Governing Council whose absence has been a point of contention, with critics arguing it has left the regulator operating without proper checks and balances HASG came down firmly on the side of inauguration. “HASG unequivocally supports the inauguration of the ARCON Council by the Federal Government,” the statement read. The umbrella body argued that a properly constituted Council, as envisaged by the ARCON Act, would “strengthen governance, enhance accountability and ensure balanced oversight of the regulator’s activities.” Crucially, HASG framed the Council not as a mechanism to constrain ARCON but as one that serves the interests of both the regulator and the regulated, a formulation that implicitly validates the concerns about oversight without endorsing ADVAN’s broader attack on ARCON’s reform agenda.
On the Advertising Industry Standard of Practice (AISOP), the regulatory framework governing payment cycles, disengagement protocols, and professional conduct that ADVAN has been pushing back against, HASG’s statement was equally unambiguous. The umbrella body maintained that AISOP “remains beneficial to the long-term health and sustainability of the sector,” describing it as a framework introduced to “promote professionalism, standardise industry practice and protect value across the advertising ecosystem.”
Importantly, HASG acknowledged that implementation challenges can arise in any regulatory environment. However, it was pointed in its view that such challenges “are best addressed through structured engagement and constructive negotiation rather than disengagement”, a thinly veiled reference to ADVAN’s decision to withdraw from HASG’s own platform, decline industry conference invitations, and pursue its grievances through the courts and the media.
On the third point, the call for ADVAN to return to the HASG forum, the umbrella body was direct. “HASG reiterates its call for ADVAN to return to the HASG forum in the spirit of partnership and collective problem-solving,” the statement said, framing the industry’s strength as contingent on the participation of all its stakeholders: advertisers, agencies, media owners, regulators, and allied bodies.
In respect to this, HASG, in its statement, pledged to engage both ADVAN and ARCON separately in consultative meetings with both bodies. “In demonstration of its commitment to peace and industry cohesion, HASG will be engaging separately with the leadership of ADVAN and ARCON in consultative meetings aimed at addressing concerns, identifying areas of common ground and working towards a sustainable resolution of the issues currently facing the industry,” the statement read.
In addition, HASG reminded both sides that the advertising sector plays a vital role in supporting enterprise, driving consumer engagement, generating employment, and projecting Nigeria’s image, all functions that cannot be performed effectively in an environment of institutional conflict and public recrimination.
“The industry is too important to be weakened by division,” the statement said plainly. HASG was equally clear that it does not view the present situation as a zero-sum contest between the regulator and the regulated. “Regulation and growth are not mutually exclusive; they must coexist to ensure a stable, competitive and investment-friendly advertising environment,” the statement argued — a sentiment that both ARCON and ADVAN have, in their own ways, claimed to support, even as their public exchanges have grown increasingly adversarial.