The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) has clinched the 2023 Golden World Award (GWA) on ‘Crisis Management’ instituted by the International Public Relations Association (IPRA) for outstanding PR campaigns.
The NAF won the prize for providing enablement for news and third-party narratives on counterinsurgency, in partnership with Image Merchants Promotion (IMPR) Limited, publishers of PRNigeria and Economic Confidential.
IPRA Secretary-General, Philip Sheppard, commended the Air Force and IMPR for the alternative narratives and media reports widely circulated to boost citizens’ confidence as well as troops’ morale.
Similarly, AT3 Resources, the strategic communications partner of Meta in West Africa, won the ‘Technology Category’ with its multi-pronged campaign, “#NoFalseNewsZone”, in Nigeria and Ghana.
After receiving the award from IPRA President Dr. Anne-gret Iturriaga Abarzua, NAF Chief of Administration, Air Vice Marshal Idi Sani, dedicated the glory to the military personnel facing the fire and sacrificing everything to keep the country safe.
“This recognition means a lot to the men and women who toil day and night in finding lasting solutions to security problems. The Nigerian Air Force finds itself in the middle of this situation, hence the need to deploy its fleet in decimating criminals.
“However, achievements sometime get drowned in doubts expressed by citizens, especially when we are the source of the success stories. The need to think outside the box gave birth to the utilisation of a third-party medium to tell our story.
“The level of our successes told by a third party received overwhelming cheers from many Nigerians. We recommend this strategy, particularly to military institutions who find it difficult to sell their own story.
“I must also state that this strategy was implementable through the directive of our amiable Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Hasan Bala Abubakar, whose inspirational leadership style has taken us to where we are today,” Sani added.
In his remarks, IMPR Board Chairman, Dr. Sule Yau Sule expressed delight that more PR agencies in Nigeria are supporting brands and organisations in achieving maximum results that are now recognised on the global scene.
Sule, the Chairman of Policy, Strategy and Media Partnership at the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), noted that PR firms are up to the task in reputation management, crisis communication and other tools of public relations.
Sule said the NIPR, under the President, Dr Ike Neliaku, has created innovative programmes and platforms for analysis and public debate to ensure engagement of experts, policymakers, legislators and other public officers in order to improve good governance.
IMPR Managing Director, Yushau A. Shuaib, and AT3 Resources MD, Tosin Adefeko, also received awards on behalf of their organisations. There were attendees from more than 20 countries; 70 winners emerged in different categories.
The GWA jury assessed the entries at the Institute of Directors in London, the first in-person meeting since the COVID-19 pandemic. The experts are from Austria, Bulgaria, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Ghana, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, the U.K., and the U.S.
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