NIPR ~ Blending The New Song and The Singer…
“If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again!” This quote from vintage William Shakespeare in his classic the ‘Twelfth Night’ had struck a chord in my subconscious while taking a deep to come up with the title of this piece.
Music artists and the appreciators of good music all over the world will readily agree that there is a connect between the song composers while cooking their songs and their would be listeners. In other words, a song composer while building up the lyrics is ever conscious of the yearnings and expectations of the audience and will strive to meet these expectations from the audience when the song is finally out. That is the reason why most audience-centric songs remain evergreen even when their owners are no more or have left the stage of performances.
A well rehearsed stage performances are rare and far in between given the plethora of other competing interests as well as the interests of the stage director to deliver a fine outing amidst cocaphony of voices nudging at his concentration. Whatever happens, the ability of the stage director to put his ideas and objectival visions into life will ultimately lead to performances that is so enticing or remain lacklustre. If the performance is good and attractive, the audience will never have their fill.
This same stage performance is currently being hatched at the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations and the stage director, Dr. Ike Neliakuchukwu, a Fellow of the Institute who until his emergence as the new helms man of the PR profession in Nigeria on the 25th of August, 2023 have often played pivotal roles to the profession that will not only be practiced here on earth but also in heaven, given the strategic importance of communication in the society. His campaign theme song titled “A New Dawn” resonated with the ever growing PR practitioners. Tumultuous attendance to the 2023 AGM which birthed the election of the new Governing Council of the NIPR with Fellow Ike as the new President is a clear attestation that practioners actually yearned for a paradigm shift in the profession they love dearly.
While successive Governing Councils of the NIPR have striven to bring the NIPR of our dream up to date, perhaps the charisma and verifiable antecedents of the man who sought to captain the ship of the NIPR for the next two years made him a force to reckon with. Today, the ‘New Dawn’ vision of this unassuming, humble leader is beginning to bear on the stage performance of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations and the belowing sound can be heard from afar. In the piece titled, “NIPR ~It’s a new song, let’s sing along” which I put together after the AGM in August, 2023, I took a deep into the myriad of concerns by practicing and upcoming practioners which substantially dwelt on the little or no value of PR to its practioners and which has made practioners to lose interest in their own profession. I didn’t just stop at raising these concerns as it were, I highlighted the expectations of the teeming practioners from the new team at the Council. I remembered Dr. Neliakuchukwu sending me a thank you message with a rider “well articulated”.
That was the new NIPR President offering a listening ear to a concerned member and equally prepared to address the concerns raised by him. Barely one hundred and twenty days, permit me to admit that our President has performed a great deal even as a stage director. I’m sure also that this is the thinking of the majority of our practitioners. It was my modest prediction then that perhaps on the shoulders of the new President lies the energy to reconfigure and realign the varied concerns of not quite a few professionals. Perhaps Ike may yet represent another version of the renewed hope agenda for the Institute. The value creation which formed a sub theme in the 2023 Conference is what we all look forward to. Everything considered, practioners want strong values attached to their profession. They desire to be accorded respect and a pride of place anywhere they might be located or found.
Today everything is gradually coming on stream with the new dawn vision :
¶ Vibrant and eager to excel Administrative team.
¶ A new Director of Public Relations just being appointed to do PR 4 PR.
¶ Cadreization of PR practitioners in the public and private sectors of the economy
¶ Visibility in the social media spaces and more.
¶ Envisioned enterprise driven PR economy.
Everything considered, I am hopeful just like many others that the new Governing Council of the NIPR under Fellow Ike Neliakuchukwu PhD is set to surpass even their own vision template. And like William Shakespeare, I’d like to crave the indulgence of the Council to play us more music… Give us excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again!”
© Austin Okechukwu is the erstwhile General Secretary of the NIPR FCT and currently the Chief Public Relations Officer of the Archdiocesean Catholic Men Organization, Abuja.