Stories by Princewill Ekwujuru

The three tiers of government have been advised to adopt policy marketing as route to engendering its achievements in the heart of the populace.

National President of the Nigeria Institute of Public Relations, NIPR, Dr. Rotimi Oladele, gave this advice while addressing newsmen on diverse issues at a breakfast meeting in Lagos. He  said:    “Even before government should make policies at all they should have injected those policies through public opinion polls, through the media, create a debate, throw it onto the table of public discourse.”

According to him, “policy marketing is the only way out for government to engender its achievement in the heart of the populace, because it is going to be the decision of the people, not the decision of government so that nobody will blame the government.”

Drawing allusion from Britain, he stated, look at what is going on Britain, the government is contemplating opting out of the European Union, EU. What the government has done is to subject the matter to the school of public opinion. “Every newspaper, television and radio are doing the same, sampling people’s opinion, they are waiting, collating information and responses, at the end of the day they will take decision.”

In Nigeria you can see a Local chairman or a Governor candidate contesting electoral position, promising the electorate hospital, when the people needs pipe borne water.

“I remember a governor that built boreholes in all the local government of the state and the people told him they don’t need it. We are okay with the stream we are drinking.

What we need most now is secondary school. So the issue is you must find out what they want, just like marketing, before you manufacture the product, if you have a bag of flour and then you just go and prepare meat pie you    wouldn’t sell anything, but when you go and found out

“It is the issue of policy marketing that brings about this. This is what governments wants to do, these are the advantages, these are the disadvantages. How do you see it?. The feedback collated is where corporate citizenship also comes into Journalism    a brand journalist    for example is a citizen of his country in two ways that as an individual and as a professional, making his output a corporate citizen, advising government, giving government a feedback that it can use to plan or re-plan, so the government must recognise that , if government falls to recognise, journalist must justify his presence by adding    that value      through the media, “ he continued.