NUC can’t regulate varsity appointments - Benue varsity VC

updated: Monday 13-04-2009

Sylva EmoekpereChief Sylva Emoekpere, Deputy President, National Institute of Marketing of Nigeria (NIMN) and Chief Executive Officer, ABS Solutions, in this interview with Akin Adewakun, says the nation’s business landscape would continue to be repulsive to investors until infrastructural and other challenges are addressed. Excerpts:

AS a marketing practitioner, what is your take on the recent move by the Federal Government, through its ministry of information, to re-brand the country?
I think Nigeria is currently carrying a brand, an image which those in government felt the need to change, because they felt it was not right for the country.

This re-branding of a thing will affect so many things, if well handled. It will affect how people see Nigeria , especially investors. For instance, if they see the country from a positive perspective, it will definitely enhance their confidence to commit their resources here. It will also affect how the other governments, that is, governments of other countries look at Nigeria . If they love what they are seeing and hearing about the country, they will be ready to support us in whatever we want to do. If the society is perceived rightly by these stakeholders: the citizens, international communities and the political environments, there would be prosperity everywhere. So it’s a subject that affects everything else. I think what they should do is to enlist the services of professionals.

While growing up, I’m sure a lot of professions must have contended for your attention. What informed your choice of marketing?
First, my efforts to make it in life through my own effort led me to economics, the science of demand and supply. I was a researcher with the Central Bank of Nigeria for 10 years. I was in the apex bank between 1965 and 1975. But, somewhere along the line, economics could not answer one big question which was due to manifest, the question of how to cope with simultaneous happenings.

You cannot say you are keeping this one stagnant while that is happening. Economics cannot answer the question such as when you have variables changing at the same time, what do you do? That is the structure of things now. We forgot then that we could have changes happening in the financial system, in industries, commerce, all at the same time. Human beings themselves are changing.

Education is changing everybody, how do you control it? But, the only discipline that gives one the clue regarding how to tackle this is marketing. Marketing says everything is changing. Markets are always changing. What you did yesterday is not what you are going to do today. In a changing environment, such as in technology, demand and supply patterns, etc, how do you cope? Marketers are the only ones that have solutions to cope with all these dynamic changes occurring in the market.

It was that excitement that drove me out of CBN to go and study marketing in tune with my culture, which is: whatever you don’t know, you learn. So I had to study marketing at the Institute of Marketing, London . That prepared me for a change into the private sector from the CBN. Many people thought it was suicidal leaving CBN at that time for private employment. But, I was seeing something else. I was seeing that the future would be marketing, not economics, because marketing is the only profession that can anticipate the changes that will soon occur and want to provide solution to them.

Whatever is now happening around here, marketing had already seen it. It has seen where it will end. It is pro-active. I’m always moving to new situations that challenge me.

The challenges I’m having now is that of reforming the country; to change the attitude around the country because I believe that we have derailed. Fortunately, the present meltdown gives us the opportunity to re-adjust ourselves.

A change is now being brought to us. There is nowhere in the world where resources are limitless. Unfortunately, we have been behaving as if we have everything and we can afford to waste it. These are resources which should have been used to re-invigorate the agricultural sector, develop our infrastructure and tap all the limitless opportunities in the petroleum sector.

Resources which should have been used to get enough power, because the country is not powered and that is why it is not progressing as fast as it should. I’ve seen how enthusiastic the people are to create products and services for the benefit of everybody. But what do we find? The roads are not there, the infrastructure is non-existent. How can a nation move without those infrastructure.

So, the present meltdown affords us the opportunity to go back to the drawing board, to re-draw our policies, our actions, our attitudes and behaviours so that this country can move forward.

How do you intend to use the ABS platform to re-orientate Nigerians, especially the youth?
There is a saying that a miracle is opportunity meeting preparedness. I’ve been thinking about this attitudinal change since 2006. By 2006, I had already gone around the country and even into politics and contested for political office twice. So by 2006, I just told myself that I could not just sit by and watch a country where I had gained a lot go down in terms of attitude.

My life had been dominated by positive attitude and I would like to have an opportunity when I can give back to the country the benefit of my life in attitude. I did not go to secondary school, but through positive actions, I was to attain all my educational feats today, including a university degree, through positive values, never-say-die attitude, not-giving-up attitude. I told myself I was going to drive these values nationally. I intend to achieve this through lectures, seminars, training and conferences.

The feat achieved in the last few months by the NIMN, no doubt, is impressive. How did you achieve that?
In the period you have mentioned, the issue of the two faces of the same institute that had dogged the institute was eventually put behind us, through a simple act. Though many had thought that it would be impossible for an incumbent to legislate himself out of office. We are the first, Koledoye and myself, to subordinate our own interests to the larger interest.

The NIMN is now the only institute that can regulate the practice of marketing in this country. We realise that as the leading light of business, as long as we continue to work in different directions, nobody will respect us. Nobody will see marketing as anything important.

But the overall interest was what mattered to us and so, we were prepared to sink our differences and come together as an institute. But I must give the credit to Chief Lugard Aimiewu, the current president, who steered the ship of the reconciliation until it anchored on one institute.

And today, we are celebrating one institute, one vision, one passion with a common destiny to lead marketing to its height in this country. Today, everybody is happy because you cannot go to any place now and they’ll ask you which one do you belong to.

We are re-certifying and issuing one certificate which commands the respect of all the companies in this country and outside, because it’s no longer a certificate issued by two people but by one institute; the profession is now one. You cannot have two bodies regulating one profession. So what exactly can be more important than this. For me, it’s an accomplished task. Even if I don’t do anything again in my life, I’m more than fulfilled. And I think history would always mention us, myself and Koledoye and others, even long after we are gone.

How does one make a career out of marketing?
Today, the direction is very clear. It’s only one institute and it is headquartered at Anthony Village, Niger House, Lagos, with the academy in Eunibrown House, also in Lagos. The marketing academy is where the training and examinations of the institute take place, while the corporate headquarters is at the Niger House. So, if you want to become a professional marketer, just send your applications to NIMN.

How would you assess the profession as practised in the country today?
You can only measure marketing performance from the brands in the market. You need to ask yourself the question: How are the brands doing? You know the power behind the brands is marketing.

You don’t measure marketing from the noise we make, you measure us from the performance of the brands. If the brands are doing well, then marketing is doing well. If the brands are not doing well, marketers are not doing well. So, you can then begin to find out which brands are doing well, which ones are not doing well.

What would you consider the greatest challenge to entrepreneurship in this country?
It’s the environment. People are trying very hard to survive in an hostile business environment. A business environment that makes it mandatory for you to run your generator before you can have power.

Until we begin to address this hostility, the entrepreneurs will always find the business terrain very difficult. You have to set up your business, you have to own your generator, you have to maintain these generators and those other things taken for granted in other climes before you can talk of successful business.