2017 Prestige Excellence Award Honours Advertising Guru, Lolu Akinwunmi With Award Of Excellence For His Contributions To Advertising Industry In Nigeria

Sunday July 30, all roads led to Royal Event Centre, Ikeja, Lagos, venue of the prestigious 2017 Prestige Excellence Award where leaders and champions in various areas of human Endeavour were honored and recognized. Among top Nigerians and professionals honored at the glamorous event is an advertising practitioner extraordinaire, Mr. Lolu Akinwunmi, Group Managing Director of Prima Garnet Adverting, a top marketing communication group in Africa.  He was honoured with an Award of Excellence for His Contributions to Advertising Industry in Nigeria

 The event is powered by Prestige International Magazine, a fast growing celebrity journal.

According to Mr. Wale Abiodun, Publisher of the magazine, in his speech the event was put together to give accolades to the deserving.

  Mr. Lolu Akinwunmi ,  the Group CEO, Prima Garnet, Lagos, Nigeria, a world-class advertising and marketing communication group.  Lolu, a 1980 graduate of the University of Lagos, started his career in 1982 with Lintas where he cut an edge for advertising and creative arts. Having worked with Lintas for six (6) years, he moved to Promoserve Grey as Executive Director, Clients Service & Media and in 1992, Lolu took the bull by the horns to start his own company, Prima Garnet Communications.

Over the years, working with his numerous associates, he has moved the company from a humble beginning to a conglomerate, overseeing a group of companies; Prima Garnet Communications, 141 Worldwide, MediaShare, Lampost Experientials, etc. He is also on the board of Premier Music.

Lolu has attended several professional courses locally and out of Nigeria, amongst which are: the Unilever African Marketing Course; Ogilvy Senior Management Programme (SMP 10), and several local and offshore management programmes and courses in advertising and management.

Lolu commands depth and professionalism in the advertising industry endearing his company to national and multinational clientele like Unilever, Coca Cola, Nestle, Motorola, GSK, First Bank, Airtel, KLM, South African Breweries, Guinness, Mnet/MultiChoice, Shell, etc.

As a result of his passion for transformational change in Nigeria, Lolu was appointed in 2009 by the then Honourable Minister of Information & Communications, Prof. Dora Akunyili as Pioneer CEO, Nigerian Rebranding Project Business Support Group (RPBSG) – Office of the Federal Minister of Information & Telecommunications.

He is a Fellow of APCON and the Nigerian Marketing Institute. He is a past President of the Association of Advertising Agencies of Nigeria (AAAN) 2007 – 2009. Lolu has presented many professional papers in marketing, advertising and general management.

Lolu was also appointed by President Jonathan on the 27th of September 2010 as the Chairman of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria, APCON, the Parastatal under the Ministry of Information, charged with the responsibility of supervising and managing the advertising practice in Nigeria in all its ramifications.

Lolu loves reading, music, amateur photography, travelling. He is married to Josephine, a lawyer, and blessed with two boys, Tosin and Seni.

FACES AT 2017 PRESTIGE EXCELLENCE AWARD [PHOTO]..CELEBRATES TOP NIGERIANS

Sunday July 30, all roads led to Royal Event Centre, Ikeja, Lagos, venue of the prestigious 2017 Prestige Excellence Award where leaders and champions in various areas of human Endeavour were honored and recognized. The glamorous event is powered by Prestige International Magazine, a fast growing celebrity journal.

According to Mr. Wale Abiodun, Publisher of the magazine, in his speech the event was put together to give accolades to the deserving. Awardees are drawn from various sectors like education, banking, hospitality, politics, religion, business, law, security and so on. Some of the faces at the event are presented below.

Saraki opens up on real reason he sacked 98 out of his over 200 aides

Among the people sacked by the Senate President is the Director of Protocol, Arthur Ndiwe, who has spent a total of 10 years on the position

The President of the Senate, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, on ‎Thursday confirmed the sack of 98 out of over 200 of his aides.
Saraki said the sacking was not targeted at the inherited staff from former Senate President, David Mark.
Saraki, when he emerged as Senate President in controversial manner in 2015, retained some of Senator Mark’s aides.
‎Saraki had in March 2017 made known his intention to disengage some of the aides.
Saraki said sacking the 98 aides was to ensure efficiency.
‎Speaking in through Special Adviser on Media, Yusuph Olaniyonu, ‎ Saraki explained that the sacking was to reposition the Senate President’s office for better service delivery .
He said: “The restructuring that has just taken place on the workforce in the office of the Senate President being reported as mass sack in the media, was meant to reposition the office for service delivery the outcome of which has affected three categories of staff in different ways.
“The first category are those that have been found capable and competent to continue with their job like all the entire members of the media unit.
“The second category are those earlier seconded from the National Assembly bureaucracy to serve in the office of the Senate President but now directed to go back to their civil service job like the head of Administration, Mrs Folashade Adigun.
“The third category are those whose services within the last two years were not all that satisfactory in the eye of the committee set up by the Senate President to carry out the repositioning exercise of his office.”
Among the people sacked by the Senate President is the Director of Protocol, Arthur Ndiwe, who has spent a total of 10 years on the position.
Ndiwe had served Mark for eight years before continuing with Saraki in June 2015.‎

ANAMBRA KILLINGS: OPC ASKS FG TO INVITE INTERPOL AND TO DECLARE NIGERIA A WAR ZONE

The Yoruba socio-cultural group, the Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) has condemned Sunday’s killing of about 11 worshippers in Saint Philip’s Catholic Church at Ozubulu in Anambra State, demanding that those behind the coldblooded slaughter be immediately unearthed and brought to justice.

In a statement in Lagos yesterday by Founder and President of OPC, Dr. Frederick Fasehun, the group described the massacre as shameful and sacrilegious.

“The killing of these innocent worshippers is one incident too many,” he said. “Happening in that serene rural environment, it demeans all Nigerians. It shows that nowhere in this country is safe. There is total breakdown of law and order in Nigeria as a whole.”

He urged investigators to solicit the assistance of the International Police.

“Perpetrators must be speedily brought to book. If there is an international connection to this callousness, as Governor Willie Obiano and the Commissioner of Police have said, then the assistance of Interpol must be solicited in order to extradite those concerned back to Nigeria for investigation, prosecution and conviction.

OPC commiserated with the Ozubulu community and the families who lost their beloved in the dawn attack.

The organisation lamented that Nigerians lived in constant fear from assassins, kidnappers and insurgents.

“This country has now entered a state of anomie where life is short and brutish. Nowhere appears to be safe: Not Lagos, not Port Harcourt or Akure or Maiduguri or Jos,” OPC said. “If Nigeria is at war, let us know. Government may just as well declare the entire Nigeria a war zone.”

As far as OPC was concerned, the spate of killings was not only evidence of the palpable insecurity throughout the country but a failure of Intelligence.

“Nigeria has become unsafe for citizens and foreigners as well. Those in government appear to be playing politics with the matter of security. They are toying with Nigerian lives. There is too much insincerity. Instead of getting on with the job of providing security, authorities are making concerted effort to look good on paper, in the social media and in the mass media,” he said. “Government must call its security operatives to order. They must be proactive in their commitments and be honest to Nigerians.”

Fasehun stressed the need for Nigerian security agencies to be proactive in order to preempt and prevent the wanton killing of innocent citizens.

Furthermore, according to him, it was a shame that thousands of Nigerians, using hunger and insecurity as excuses, daily risked their lives in the desert and on the high seas, while attempting to cross into Europe.

Fasehun said: “Let us bear in mind the old saying, East or West, Home is best.”