The management of PRNigeria, Nigeria’s leading private news distribution portal has announced plans to diversify operations in its integrated marketing communication to cover other segments of the economy.
Chief Executive Officer of PRNigeria, Yushau Shuaib while speaking with newsmen in his office in Abuja said the decision to add other sectors to the military and security agencies was taken following the highly successful media campaign that the company held against insurgency and insecurity especially between second quarter of 2013 and late 2015.
Shuaib recalled that before PRNigeria was brought in by the government to help counter the widespread negative narrative of the Boko Haram terrorists, only very few were aware that Nigerian troops were doing anything to counter insurgency.
“PRNigeria have been actively involved in cementing relationship between the media and security agencies in the recent past. And we have succeeded in changing the negative media narrative of the counter-terrorism campaign at a period when the Boko Haram was having the upper hand in the propaganda campaign of the war against Nigeria.
“Our agency also had the responsibility of consulting for the Forum of Spokespersons of Security and Response Agencies (FOSSRA), which has membership from critical public institutions including the military, security, intelligence and response agencies including creating other portals for providing accurate and timely information to the public.”
From now, Shuaib who was for about two decades in the federal civil service promoting the images of various ministries and agencies including Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Health, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, National Emergency Management Agency among others said PRNigeria will venture into other important spheres of national life.
“In less than three years, PRNigeria issued over 2,500 releases on behalf of the military, paramilitary and other security agencies. We also collaborated with other bodies like INigerian to rephrase the negative narratives about Nigeria and successfully neutralised voice both nationally and globally.
“Rather than merely issuing press releases, we will now also independently source for credible and newsworthy news items, especially breaking news for the media,” he added.
He said that members of his team were determined to bring their skills to bear on the Nigerian economy and use the experienced garnered in the war against terrorism to also turn around the negative narration about the economy and political stability generally.
The entrepreneur however, advised the Buhari administration to be cautious of actions that may have unintended consequences on the economy but should rather pursue programes and policies that would create job opportunities and stability in the country.
