APRA Elects Nigeria’s Omoniyi Ibietan as Secretary-General

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

The Head of Media Relations at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Mr Omoniyi Ibietan, has been appointed as the Secretary-General of the African Public Relations Association (APRA).

The Nigerian was chosen for the position at the 35th Annual Conference and Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the group in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

He was elected into a three-man executive council comprising Arik Karani from Kenya as the President, and Michele Mekeme from Cameroon as the Vice President.

Mr Ibietan has promised to work with other members of the team to continue the trajectory of reforms in APRA, expand the democratic space by encouraging greater participation of national public relations institutions on the continent and work more closely with the African Union Commission and Council of Ministers to put public relations at the heart of policy, programmes, and project implementation.

While presenting a paper at the event, titled Digital Inclusion As Arbiter Of Accessible Public Relations: A Case Of Nigerian Communications Commission, Mr Ibietan advanced a thesis that digital inclusion is the arbiter of digital public relations.

Mr Ibietan is a fellow of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), a journalist, writer, and author, with over 20 years of experience in media and communication scholarship and practice, spanning journalism, academia, policy discourse, communication strategy, regulation, and stakeholder relations.

He earned BA and MA in Communication Arts and Communication & Language Arts from the Universities of Uyo and Ibadan in Nigeria, respectively.

Earlier, he obtained a diploma in journalism with distinction from the Moscow-based International Institute of Journalism. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the North-West University in South Africa, with specialisation in political communication. He is a IP3 certified regulation specialist and holds a mini-MBA in telecommunications from NEOTELIS in Paris.

He is also a member of the African Council for Communication Education (ACCE), an Associate Registered Practitioner of Advertising (arpa) and member of the International Institute of Communications (IIC), the world’s only policy debating platform for the converged communications industry.

As a scholar, he focuses on patterns of political communication through new media; media and culture studies; and theoretical & normative foundations of communication in relation to democracy and freedom. He is on the faculty of the Nigerian campus of Italy-based Rome Business School (RBS), where he teaches doctoral students PR & Advertising and Media Management & Communication Strategy. He also facilitates learning to students in the Master of Corporate Communication programme at RBS.