He is a worthy septuagenarian, having lived those years serving man and country.

The history of APRA will be incomplete without filling the gap with the visionary role of Dr. Adamolekun as a leading light of those who came to its rescue at the most challenging times.

It was he (with the support of other people, especially enablers like Mallam Kabir Dangogo (of blessed memory, his immediate predecessor), who re-established the foundations of APRA, emplaced structures for the sustainability of the secretariat following the decision to make Nigeria the  new secretariat of the continental body of public relations practitioners and professionals.

It was uncle Wole who essentially prevented a reoccurrence of the dormancy APRA hitherto suffered for over 5 years as he and Dangogo facilitated the registration of APRA in Nigeria and he never wavered since then.

A man of immense sense of gratitude, Dr. Adamolekun almost caused me to cry with his account of how the late Kabir Dangogo and Chief Larry Williams nudged and supported him to become Secretary General of APRA at the Johannesburg Conference of the Association in 2006.

He would continue in the tradition of mentorship as he also mentored Chief Yomi Badejo-Okusanya (YBO) to succeed him. A man under a special grace, YBO, is possibly the only Secretary General of APRA who became president and perhaps the longest-serving official of APRA. I have had the fortune of coming under the tutelage of these men mentioned in this  narrative.

For Adamolekun, the brass tacks for today, long after his tenure lapsed, he continued to participate in APRA programmes with passion and commitment, bringing on board rare values.

Besides attending all APRA forums, he serves as a reviewer, alongside others, particularly his colleague, Peter Munywoki Mutie, former President of APRA, to review abstracts for paper presentationAPRA conferences.

A member of the APRA Board of Trustees, Dr. Adamolekun is on the African Regional Council of the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management (GA), serving concurrently as a member of the Governing Board of the Global PR body. He is the Chair of GA’s Academic and Research Council, a central arm of GA shaping knowledge production and sharing.

Scholar, practitioner, and administrator, Dr. Adamolekun is a stickler to ethics, professionalism, and value as the central organizing principles of public relations.

He was the pioneer head of communications, information, and public relations at the Mass Mobilization for Self-Reliance, Social Justice, and Economic Recovery (MAMSER), the forerunner of the National Orientation Agency. Anyone familiar with the works of MAMSER would recall the impeccable communication campaigns rolled out by the agency in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Adamolekun started his career in communication management as a freelance journalist at the defunct DAILY SKETCH and has traversed the gamut of communication practice including team-leading corporate relations in the public, banking, and the oil & gas sectors, where he was central to the design of people-centric decisions, especially during his tenure as the Deputy Executive Secretary of Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA).

Married to an amazing woman who will equally turn 70 in May, Dr. Adamolekun has been a fellow of NIPR since 1989 and fellow of APRA as well as the Nigerian Institute of Management.

He is also a member of the African Council for Communication Education (ACCE), member of the Board of the Commission on Public Relations Education (CPRE) in Washington, D.C., the International Public Relations Association (IPRA), Chartered Institute of Public Relations, London, and the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

I join thousands of our professional colleagues globally to wish Dr. Adamolekun a happy birthday celebration, and I invite you all, dear friends, to enlist in the celebration of a wondrous Nigerian patriot.

*Dr. Omoniyi Ibietan, Secretary General of APRA, wrote from Abuja

Dr. Ibietan has promised to work with other members of the Executive Council to continue the trajectory of reforms in APRA, expand the democratic space by encouraging greater participation of national public relations institutions on the Continent and work more closely with the African Union Commission and Council of Ministers to put public relations at the heart of policy, programmes, and project implementation. Ibietan was elected into a three-man Executive Council.

The other two members are Arik Karani (Kenya), President, and Dr. Michele Mekeme (Cameroon), Vice President.

Omoniyi Ibietan is a journalist, writer, and author. As Head of Media Relations Management at the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), he oversees aspects of the public communication strategy of the national regulatory authority for telecommunication in Nigeria. Earlier in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic.

He was Special Media Advisor to the Federal Minister of Information and Communication.

He has over 20 years of experience in media and communication scholarship and practice, spanning journalism, academia, policy discourse, communication strategy, regulation, and stakeholder relations.

Omoniyi Ibietan earned BA and MA in Communication Arts and Communication & Language Arts from the Universities of Uyo and Ibadan in Nigeria, respectively, graduating atop his classes. Earlier, he obtained a diploma in journalism with distinction from the Moscow-Based International Institute of Journalism.

He holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the North-West University in South Africa, with specialisation in political communication. He is a IP3 certified regulation specialist and holds a mini MBA in telecommunications from NEOTELIS in Paris.

He is also a member of the African Council for Communication Education (ACCE), an Associate Registered Practitioner of Advertising (arpa) and member of the International Institute of Communications (IIC), the world’s only policy debating platform for the converged communications industry.

As a scholar, he focuses on patterns of political communication through new media; media and culture studies; and theoretical & normative foundations of communication in relation to democracy and freedom.

He is on the faculty of the Nigerian campus of Italy-based Rome Business School (RBS), where he teaches doctoral students PR & Advertising and Media Management & Communication Strategy. He also facilitates learning to students in the Master of Corporate Communication programme at RBS.

His first book, ‘Social Media, Social Demography, and Voting Behaviour in Nigeria’ was published by Premium Times Books in Washington in May 2023.

He has travelled extensively in Africa, North America, Europe, and Asia.

He is married, has children, plays tennis and scrabble, loves reading and writing, and loves meeting people, especially people from other cultures.

At the ongoing conference, Ibietan presented the first paper at the commencement of business sessions.

The title of his paper is: ‘Digital Inclusion as Arbiter of Accessible Public Relations: A Case Study of Nigerian Communications Commission’.

Using Castells’ Theory of the Network Society and the Knowledge Gap Theory, and based on the actions of the Nigerian government through the activities of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Ibietan advanced a thesis that digital inclusion is the arbiter of digital public relations.

Through implementation of laws, policies, guidelines, developmental regulation, collaborative partnerships, social investments, operational efficiency and ancillary actions that are consequential and quantifiable, and using copious pictorial evidence, Omoniyi Ibietan discoursed a perspective that NCC’s digital inclusion programmes, projects and activities are foundational to digital economy because investment in and coordination of expansion of digital infrastructure, demonstrating their affordances and enhancing people’s access to such resources, constitute the building blocks and raison d’être of digital economy and inherently digital public relations.

APRA, the successor to the Federation of African Public Relations Association (FAPRA), instituted in Nairobi in 1975, exists to foster unity of Africans and their global allies through interactions and exchange of meaning. Pivoted on standardisation of public relations practice and scholarship on the Continent to enhance its relevance to the African reality, APRA member states and individuals meet annually at a location in any of its regional centres (East, North, South, West, Central, Indian Ocean Islands, and Francophone) to have a conversation with a thematic focus on any of its key intervention areas (Health & Education, Economic Integration, Good Governance, Tourusm & Leisure, and Infrastructure Development).

This year’s theme centered on ‘One Africa, One Voice: Bridging Africa’s Communication Divide’.

APRA Côte d’Ivoire 2024 is endorsed by the Government of Côte d’Ivoire, the Holding Opinion & Public (THOP), and major global PR associations, namely the International Public Relations Association (IPRA), The International Communications

Consultancy Organisation (ICCO), the Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management (GA), the African Union Commission (AUC), and PR national associations across the continent.

Additionally, the conference featured the eighth edition of the Innovation Summit (IN2SUMMIT) and includes the seventh edition of the SABRE Awards Africa, holding tonight.

The APRA secretariat is in Nigeria, and the body maintains an observer status with the African Union.