Mr. Reuben Ejike Muoka, and Dr. Omoniyi Ibietan; the Director of Public Affairs (DPA), and the Head, Media Relations Management at the Nigerian Communications Commission, respectively, have been inducted as Fellows, Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR).
NIPR
The Institute was established in 1963. The body attained the status of a Chartered Institute in June 1990 through Decree No. 16 (now an Act of the National Assembly) from which it derives the power and responsibility to register members, set parameters of knowledge to acquire to qualify to practise, regulate the practice and development of the PR Profession as well monitor professional conducts through an established Code of Ethics, amongst others.
As it is the practice with respectable professional organizations everywhere, the law stipulates standard academic and professional qualifications for admission into the Institute.
Mr. Reuben Muoka
To this end, Muoka, who was recently appointed the DPA at NCC, bagged the fellowship of NIPR.
Muoka was in 2021, appointed to head the Special Duties Department, which superintends the International Relations Unit; Emergency Communication Centres Unit; the Public Private Partnership Unit; and the Security Services Unit of the Commission.
He was promoted as Director of the Department before his current redeployment to lead the Public Affairs Department, the arm of the Commission mandated to manage the image and visibility of Nigeria’s telecom regulator and a leading light of the Nigerian public service.
Muoka is expected to bring his rich and versatile experience in both specialized and traditional journalism, public relations, integrated marketing communications (IMC), corporate communication and people management, to bear on the Commission’s vision to expand the frontiers of its public goodwill and the impact of its reputational assets.
A former Deputy Communications Editor of the Vanguard Newspapers, former Deputy General Manager at MTS First Wireless (Nigeria’s first mobile telephone operator), Muoka joined the NCC in 2007 as a Principal Manager, and was deployed to the Public Affairs Department where he headed the Media and Public Relations Unit.
He later rose from the rank of Principal Manager to the position of an Assistant Director in 2010, and by 2015, as a Deputy Director, appointed to head the re-engineered Public Relations Unit of PAD. In 2017, he was redeployed to the Policy, Competition and Economic Analysis Department to head the Economic Analysis unit of department.
Reuben Muoka earned M.Sc. degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos, specialising in Public Relations and Advertising, where he had earlier successfully completed a Postgraduate Diploma (PGD) in the same field of Mass Communication. Much earlier, he had obtained a bachelor’s degree in Performing Arts at the University of Ilorin.
As a mark of his distinctive journalism career, Reuben Muoka received a fellowship of the Egyptian Embassy in Nigeria to undertake a Pan-African training and tour of Egypt in 1999, leading to an award of a continental Diploma Certificate in Journalism at the instance of the Egyptian Ministry of Information, and the African Journalists Union (AJU) in Cairo, Egypt.
The focused, innovative and illuminating coverage and analysis of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in the pre and immediate post liberalisation period of telecom industry in Nigeria is credited to the insights of visionary journalists like Muoka, whose pioneering initiative led to the establishment and institutionalisation of the Hi-Tech Desk in Vanguard Newspapers in late 1990s.
As the Chairman of the League of Communications Correspondents (LECCO), Muoka led his colleagues to give voice and focus to the advocacy for the liberalisation and deregulation of the telecom industry in Nigeria in the 1990s.
During his active days in journalism at Vanguard Newspapers, Muoka served concurrently as Africa’s contributing editor to the London-based CommunicationsWeek for four years beginning from 1998, during which he undertook copious reportage of the African telecom landscape.
The London-based magazine shared Muoka’s work to an enthusiastic global audience in a rare showcase of Africa’s promise as a flourishing point for the emergent converging telecommunications industry.
Between 1995 and 2001, Muoka leveraged his expertise to provide part-time public relations consultancy to notable companies and institutions in the telecommunications industry, including the Nigerian Mobile Communications Limited, Abuja; Multi-links Telecommunications Limited, Lagos; Satellite Telecommunications Limited, Lagos; Pulse Marketing Communications Ltd, Lagos; and the Nigerian Communications Commission, Abuja, years before he joined the Commission as a staff.
Reuben Ejike Muoka is a member of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ); a full member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (mnipr); and an associate member of the Registered Practitioners of Advertising (arpa), regulated by the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON).
On behalf of the Board and Management of the Commission, I heartily congratulate Reuben on his new role and look forward to working closely with him and his team in Public Affairs Department, as key internal stakeholders in the Commission’s re-engineering processes to meet and surpass Federal Government’s expectations for a robust telecommunications sector and a remarkably emergent digital economy.
Omoniyi Ibietan, PhD
Ibietan is a certified regulation specialist, multi-stakeholder relationship and communication management professional, and social entrepreneur.
He was the Senior Manager Media Management and earlier, he served the Commission as Senior Manager Legislative Relations at the Commission. In that capacity, he was a frontline relationship manager of the Commission with the National Assembly (Nigeria’s Federal Bicameral Parliament). Omoniyi was also Manager, Media and PR at the Commission in 2011.
Before he joined the NCC, in the summer of 2007, Omoniyi signed on with the Nigerian Communications Satellite Limited, set up its Corporate Communications Department and later managed its Media Strategy and External Relations responsibilities.
Between February 2006 and May 2007, he served as Special Assistant (Media) to Nigeria’s Federal Minister of Information and National Orientation (later Information and Communication).
Omoniyi also worked with Freedom House (Nigeria Project, first in sub-Saharan Africa) as Regional Media Researcher in charge of Niger Delta region, during which period he was also commissioned to conduct baseline studies of civil society groups in the Niger Delta as a preface to the Youth Leaders Training Workshop on Non Violent Transformation of Conflict, organized by the Costa Rica-Based United Nations-mandated University for Peace.
The workshop held in Port Harcourt and he also served as a rapporteur at the workshop. Very early in his carrer, he worked as Staff Consultant with Set and Sell Communications Limited, publishers of Waterlink, the official journal of the Nigerian Water Supply Association. Equally, he was for a long time a volunteer staff of ECO-OUTREACH, a non-governmental environmental rights advocacy group in the Niger Delta where he served as Programmes Officer.
He’s an advocate of popular, representative & participatory democracy.
