The Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) will organise a National Spokespersons Summit in its quest to reinvent the position and discourage violent communication.
The President of the institute, Dr Ike Neliaku, said this at a meeting organised for the media and council members in Abuja.
Neliaku said the summit slated for March 25 to March 28 at the International Conference Centre (ICC), Abuja, would change the narrative on nation building and development.
“If you don’t change your narrative, you cannot change the society; societies are built on narratives and that’s why those that have bad mouth culture and violent communicators will create problem from what they say.
“We want to bring spokespersons in Nigeria to seat together including those who have been successful across the world to come and share thoughts with us on how to reinvent our spokespersons to serve the nation and their profession.
“Then later in April, we will have our annual Public Relations (PR) conference for a whole week in Abeokuta, Ogun State, to look at the importance of PR in an economy of nationhood.
“We are bringing together all the practitioners within and those from outside Nigeria to look at how to rebuild our economy,” Neliaku said.
According to him, efforts have been geared towards professionalism in Public Relations following plans to establish NIPR University in Abuja.
“We discovered that people graduate as Mass Communication students, and desire to be PR practitioners but there is no school where they can go for professionalism.
“The kind of thing you have in legal practice after you have finished your degree programme, you go to the Nigerian Law School to professionalise and become a lawyer.
“So, we are establishing that school. The education advisory board, chaired by the Vice President of NIPR, is already concluding on that, so we are going to unveil it.
“The essence is that PR is not just a profession for civil servants, it is a profession that empowers, and it is important to the growth of any economy whether personal economy, family economy, organisation economy or national economy.
