Maritime journalist, Mr. Sylvanus Ekpo has advocated for the appointment of a full-fledged Director of Public Relations for the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) as part of Management Function.
Ekpo made this advocacy in a lecture entitled, “Protocol Management in Modern Corporate Branding”, at a 3-day training on Effective Public Relations and Protocols Management in Corporate Governance organized by the Maritime Media Limited in partnership with the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) in Lagos on Wednesday.
He recalled that the PR office in NIMASA was always manned by a Deputy Director adding that a Deputy Director does not have a Management function since he doesn’t sit in Council.
Ekpo who is also the Managing Editor of Shipping World Magazine contended that even when the Director of PR doesn’t need to contributing anything to a discussion in Management meetings, he had to be there.
According to him,” For PR to be a Management Function, the Director of PR must sit and listen to what the egg heads are saying. He is not just a third party, after they have finished with the meeting, they come and write note and give to you and from there you begin to circulate. That is the function of a Deputy Director.
“And anyone that gets to become a Director in that office, they remove him. Tumaka was there and when they made her a Director, they took her away. Osamgbi is there now as Deputy Director, if he is made a Director tomorrow, they will remove him. So, that office is not a Management function and that is the problem.
“They should appoint a substantive Director of Public Relations for NIMASA who should be at par with other Directors in that agency and not the Office of the Deputy Director. That status is not only demeaning but it doesn’t speak well of what PR is supposed to do for this organization”.
On the essence of the lecture, Ekpo admitted that the lecture was put together to sharpen the skills of protocol and PR staff to understand that they have to align their work and their actions with the vision of NIMASA which was to become the apex maritime agency in this country, building capacity among others saying that it was not about the product but the intangible products, the core values that people had to drive as employees.
“When I come to your office, how do you treat me? When I am going, how am I treated? How do you perceive NIMASA in the eyes of the public? What do people see? How do people perceive it? It is not what you are even saying; it is what people are saying about your organization without you being there that matters.
“So, this kind of training is important, now as we are coming to the end of the year, get the staff, having worked from January till this time, come off your bit to a relax atmosphere like this and then listen to experts discuss what we have just discussed today”, he added.
In his opening remarks, the Director-General of NIMASA, Dr. Dakuku Peterside commended the participants in the lecture for the opportunity given them to develop their capacity adding that the training would enhance their capacity to function better in their areas of responsibility.
Peterside who was represented at the training by Mrs. Shielibe Abe promised that more local and international trainings were in the offing for NIMASA staff to enable them build capacity so as to function effectively on their duty posts.
He however enjoined them to take the training seriously as they would undergo examination at the end of the training and be rated from their performance during the training.
Earlier in his welcome address, the Managing Director of the Maritime Media Limited, Mr. Asu Beks observed that the training programme would undoubtedly offer immense insight into the PR and Protocol functions as a tool for corporate branding of the organization.
He hoped that at the end of the training, participants would be enriched by the body of knowledge that would be made available to them and find creative ways of implementing some of the recommendations.
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