Aesthetic beauty in Lagos, enjoyed for a season after the creation of the State Signage and Advertisement Agency (LASAA), has been submerged by political posters that litter major streets, roads, bus stops, and exclusive areas.
It is always a huge challenge for the fledging LASAA during electioneering when the law governing out-of-home advertisements is relaxed. Political parties get away with what corporate organisations get heavily punished for.
Political posters also make their way to street lampposts, where different parties compete for space with their flags.
Enter LASAA
LASAA was established in 2006 to regulate and control outdoor advertising and signage displays to ensure civic beautification.
“We are responsible for the management, regulation and control of the signage and outdoor advertising environment in Lagos State. By implication, we are responsible for managing all forms of signage and outdoor branding opportunities in the state,” said LASAA Managing Director, George Noah.
Before and after LASAA
Prior to the establishment of LASAA, outdoor advertising was an all-comers affair. Outdoor hoardings were at every corner which practitioners referred to as cluster. The environment was an eyesore.
In those days, minimal and/or non-regulation produced uncontrollable operators. Brands did not get value for advertising spend as outdoor hoardings overlapped one another. Consumers missed the messages intended for them.
Prior to LASAA, there were as many as 6,000 billboards spaced at almost every 50 metres. “But now we are very cautious in terms of the approval that we give for new structures,” said Noah.
LASAA has brought sanity to the industry as well as to the environment. It came with sacrifices as operators counted losses as the result of new law. But it brought aesthetic appeal to the Centre of Excellence.
Political advertisements
LASAA keeps a tight lid on corporate organisations. Poster campaign is no longer in vogue for multinational and local firms. In fact, poster campaign by businesses has vanished even though LASAA has designated areas where they can be pasted.
But the same cannot be said about political parties whose campaigns LASAA overlooks.
Recently, Police Commissioner, Cornelius Aderanti, warned against the removal of the posters and billboards of political parties in the state.
But Noah insisted that LASAA will continue with its lawful business of removing illegally pasted posters, irrespective of politicians and political parties involved.
He argued that the removal of posters that deface the environment is a statutory duty of LASAA, and it is unlawful for the police to arrest LASSA staff for doing their job.
Noah said the agency had published guidelines for deploying electoral materials in four national dailies in addition to holding a town hall meeting with all political parties where the guidelines were presented.
Superior power
Prior to Noah’s appointment, LASAA had acquired poster removing machines and was firm in implementing the law against indiscriminate political advertisements. In the 2007 election its officials white-washed such posters pasted at unauthorised places.
At the time, the police and the agency agreed to maintain a clean and beautiful environment. That has now gone with the wind.
Stakeholders believe that LASAA caved in to the threat by the police to arrest and prosecute those who remove posters.
A source in LASAA confided in TheNiche that “the state government has asked us to relax regulation on political posters because it almost pitched the state government against federal government.
“This is a temporary campaign. If the election had been held as scheduled, Lagos would have returned to its beautiful state before the end of March 2015.”
Stakeholders’ perspective
Stakeholders have advised LASAA to relax any law during political campaign to avoid being partisan.
Lagos is controlled by the All Progressives Party (APC). Since there are federal roads in Lagos, the federal government, controlled by the People Democratic Party (PDP), believes that it is not answerable to the state government to advertise on its roads.
Outdoor consultant, Abayomi Idowu, said “for LASAA not to be seen a partisan it should relax the law governing LASAA during election.”
Cost of arbitrariness
Beyond defacing the environment, political advertisements come at astronomical cost to operators and regulators alike. LASAA has lost over N50 million in revenue as a result of non-compliance.
And LASAA disclosed that Globacom terminated a multi-million naira outdoor contract with Clearedge Limited over the campaign posters of President Goodluck Jonathan.
Clearedge, which is based in Lagos, confirmed that this happened due to the imposition of PDP posters on street lampposts paid for by Globacom.
LASAA said another multi-national telecoms giant, Huawei, cancelled its outdoor campaign with Touchpoint Limited, another agency based in the city, over the deployment of PDP campaign items on poles it had paid for.
Noah disclosed in 2014 that the state government lost over N1 billion in revenue because LASAA does not have access to outdoor hoardings in military establishments in the state.
Outdoor advertising in Lagos is worth N50.29 billion, according to him.