By Yakubu Salisu, Kano
Despite the important role of image making as well as dissemination of accurate information, Public Relation Officers (PROs) in Kano State are crying over less motivation.
Findings by Blazon News Nigeria revealed Public Relations Job under the State Civil Service, as the most ‘boring’ and ‘spirit killing’ cadre due to neglect and lack of motivation.
Most of the Public Relation Officers (PROs) who spoke to this medium under the condition of anonymity due to Civil Service rules revealed that, only Information Officers working in few ministries and Parastatals in the state can boast of meaningful engagements.
This platform reports most of these Officers have no running cost budget allocated for their offices which cripples the PR job and at the end, affects the smooth flow of information about government’s policies and activities as it concerns the people.
Apart of non budget for the offices of the PROs, understaffing, inadequate and lack of equipment needed remains a challenge as some ministry’s PROs plays both the roles of a photographer, Master of Ceremony (MC) during occasions at the same time, sound equipment engineers.
Below are some of their comments
“There is supposed to be a functioning PR unit in every Ministry and Parastatals of the state government with various staff like camera men, sound system engineers and the head of communication. Alas ! Only few of us have assistants”
“Some agencies under Kano state government are as good as non-existent due to silence or poor PR and all these boils down to lack of importance attached to our job. Some places don’t even have posted public relation officers”.
“Because we don’t have budgets, we find it difficult to communicate to the people and if we must, we have to go through the back and forth process of requesting for funds and in some cases, we use our personal funds just to get the job done”.
“There are government agencies in Kano that don’t release single information to the public throughout the year or throughout a tenure. This doesn’t mean they are not working. No, it is because there is no functioning Public Relations Unit”.
“Some of us don’t even go to work often because we hardly have anything to do in our offices. We are often idle moving from one office to another to gist or from one tree shade to another”.
“Practice they say makes perfect. You will be surprised when some public relation officers issue statements because they haven’t been writing and hardly does the state Ministry of information carry out in-house training sessions for us”.
Kano Ministry of Information Reacts
When contacted, the Commissioners for Information and Internal Affairs Kano, Comr. Ibrahim Waiya said it is true, the ministry has received some of such complaints and strategies are being designed to tackle such challenges.
“We have received these complaints and these are some of the things I will accord top priorities. As you know, Public Relation Officers are crucial in bridging communication gap between the government and the people and without providing an enable atmosphere, they can’t function well”.
“Though we are planning on trainings for them, I implore them on self development in order to conform with modern techniques of information sharing.
They need to understand that they are critical in their various MDAs and as such, must do everything possible to blend with ‘time’ which will make them more relevant”, he said.
The New Commissioner further stated that, “due to some of these challenges, some of the PROs have become so relaxed to the point they fail to do their job as it should be.
“This must not continue, so, while we are going to do our best to upgrade their skills and other things needed, we must emphasized on the need for them to wake up, Waiya emphasized.
What Kano State Head of Civil Service said
The Kano State Head of Service’s Boss, Alh. Abdullahi Musa, on his part explained that the issues raised by the public relation officers are not completely true.
According to him, the problem is more of incompetency and lack of initiatives on the part of the officers and must come up with methods of publicity that will make them relevant.
“It is not about the office, but the person heading the office. If you are productive, your organization of assignment will always be in the news.
Remember that, every person heading an organ of the government wants the governor to know he is working as such would want his information in circulation.
I urge our Information officers to take serious, training sessions organized for them and improve their skills and register their complaints to their ministry without breaching the rule of service’s oath of secrecy”, Musa added.