By Chido Nwakanma
In the crowded landscape of professional literature, most works on public relations (PR) concentrate on refining tactics or rebranding Western frameworks for new markets. It was a pleasant surprise, then, to review Efe Obiomah’s How to Build a Successful Public Relations Career in Nigeria (BrandSpark Limited, February 2026), a book that offers a definition of PR from the Nigerian practice perspective. That discovery led me to a far more ambitious initiative: a 2025 manifesto by Prof. E.S. Dandaura, the respected Vice-President of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR).
Titled ‘Redefining Public Relations for Greater Relevance’, this work is not merely a presentation but a philosophical reflection and a deliberate institutional call to action. It advocates for decolonising the profession, embedding it within indigenous wisdom, and repositioning its purpose around the most valuable and sensitive currency of our era: trust.
The Manifesto: A New Definition for a New Reality
Redefining Public Relations for Greater Relevance is a significant institutional initiative by the NIPR, Nigeria’s statutory authority that oversees PR practice. Presented as a slide presentation and officially endorsed by the NIPR Council on 22 July 2025, it introduces Africa’s first major locally developed definition of public relations.
“Public Relations is a strategic leadership role that builds trust, reputation, lasting relationships, and drives inclusive development through ethical, transparent, and culturally respectful communication.”
This definition’s significance is threefold:
1. Decolonial Intent: It openly rejects the wholesale importation of Western definitions (such as those from PRSA, CIPR, or the Mexican Statement) as culturally mismatched for African realities.
2. Professional Re-positioning: It elevates PR from a tactical function of “messaging” or “reputation polishing” to a strategic leadership and development role—directly confronting Africa’s core challenges of trust deficits, nation-building, and inclusive growth.
3. Institutional Weight: Backed by the NIPR’s legal charter (CAP N114, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria), this definition possesses immediate regulatory, educational, and ethical authority in Nigeria, with potential ripple effects across the continent through organisations such as the African Public Relations Association (APRA).
In the wider PR literature, this manifesto joins a small but expanding collection from the Global South that argues that communication professions should be culturally rooted rather than universally standardised.
The Core Argument: An African Reality Check
Dandaura’s central argument is that imported definitions fail because they overlook the continent’s unique communicative landscape—one shaped by oral traditions, the authority of chiefs, and communities that “read behaviour, not press releases.” He contends that Africa’s real crisis is not a lack of technology or messaging, but a profound deficit of trust.
The manifesto builds its case with conviction, making several powerful assertions:
• Definition as a Boundary: “Without a solid definition, PR becomes anything and everything, which is already why the field gets misused, misunderstood and abused.” A definition, he adds, “sets the boundaries of the profession, clarifies the role of the practitioner, and sets ethical expectations.”
• Definition as a Guide: A definition “guides policy, law, and professional regulation, ensures PR aligns with societal needs and protects the public.”
• Definition as a Foundation: “Definition shapes practice; practice shapes reputation and reputation shapes the future of the profession.” The right definition will enable PR to become what it is meant to be: “A leadership function that builds trust, strengthens society, and guides institutions with truth.”
Dandaura argues that Africa must redefine public relations because “trust, culture and truth matter more than ever. Trust is the main currency of African PR. Citizens trust influencers more than officials. They believe voice notes over press briefings. Credibility can’t be photoshopped.”
Crucially, he grounds this new definition in a deep historical legitimacy, arguing that “Africa practised PR before PR had a name.” He cites pre-colonial institutions as evidence:
• Griot – the first crisis communicator.
• Town crier – the first broadcaster.
• Storyteller – the first leadership coach.
• Masquerade – the first moral regulator, providing anonymous feedback “before burner accounts.”
“They all earned trust through truth and cultural wisdom,” he states.
Analysis: The Prose of Conviction and a Foundation for the Future
Style and Rhetoric
Dandaura’s writing style is a masterclass in persuasive oratory translated to the page. It is sharp, aphoristic, and designed to make an impact. Sentences like, “In Africa, people don’t just hear your words; they listen with their history,” and “Communication without conscience = manipulation,” function as memorable refrains that ground the reader in the text’s moral urgency.
The presentation’s visual structure—short paragraphs, bolded takeaways, and stark contrasts—mirrors the clarity it demands of the PR profession itself.
How the New Definition Departs
The new NIPR definition marks a decisive departure from Western models:
• Leadership, not spin: PR is positioned as a management advisory function, not a tactical or reactive discipline.
• Trust as the central outcome: Where earlier definitions emphasised relationships or reputation, the NIPR version places trust—a currency critically eroded in African public life—at the core.
• Inclusive development: The definition explicitly links PR to societal progress, reflecting the continent’s preoccupation with development communication.
• Cultural respect: By mandating “culturally respectful communication,” it acknowledges Africa’s diverse linguistic, ethnic, and traditional structures as essential to effective practice.
Strengths
• A Necessary Cultural Reclamation: The manifesto’s main strength is its bold challenge to the status quo. By emphasising indigenous communication systems, Dandaura offers profound historical and cultural legitimacy for the profession, positioning PR not as a Western import but as a contemporary expression of a timeless African tradition.
• Rigorous Comparative Framework: The work provides a clear, balanced analysis of dominant global definitions, explicitly highlighting their strengths and weaknesses in African contexts. It is scholarly, transparent, and offers a strong foundation for its argument.
• Contextual Depth: The “African Reality Check” is articulated with precision—history influences listening, intentions outweigh slogans, and trust is the genuine crisis. These are not slogans but reflections of lived socio-political dynamics.
• Forward-Looking Relevance: The manifesto explicitly addresses the “New African Public”—digitally armed, fact-checking, and merciless toward insincerity—making the definition fit for the social-media era.
Weaknesses and Unresolved Questions
• Limited Empirical Basis: While rhetorically compelling, the document provides no original data (e.g., surveys on public trust, case studies of failed Western-style campaigns) to support its assertions. It relies on conviction rather than evidence.
• Scope Narrowness: Despite the ambition to redefine “African” PR, the focus is almost exclusively on Nigeria. Pan-African variations, such as the Ubuntu philosophy in Southern Africa, are not explored in depth.
• Potential Over-Idealisation: Traditional African communication is presented as inherently ethical. The manifesto does not grapple with historical counter-examples of how oratory and rumour have been used to divide or support authoritarian control.
• Implementation Gap: The work is an excellent diagnosis and a compelling philosophical argument, but it offers no practical plan for implementation. It does not specify curriculum changes, accreditation standards, or how practitioners will be trained to operationalise concepts such as “culturally respectful communication” or to measure “inclusive development.” For a practitioner facing a client who demands “spin,” the text provides the moral justification for refusal but not the tactical playbook.
• Two definitions? The author argues that proper definitions would enable PR to become what it is meant to be. The text then presents what appears to be a second or alternative definition. It states that PR is “A leadership function that builds trust, strengthens society, and guides institutions with truth.”
The Broader Context: Nigerian and African PR Literature
Public relations lacks a single universal definition, with over 600 identified globally. In Nigerian and broader African contexts, the literature reveals a trajectory from uncritical adoption of Western frameworks toward emerging efforts to indigenise the profession.
Nigerian scholar the late Ikechukwu E. Nwosu’s taxonomy of definitions—classifying them as non-sensical, commonsensical, and technical/professional—remains influential.
Other Nigerian contributions have laid the groundwork for the NIPR’s 2025 definition, including Asemah, Kente, and Nkwam-Uwaoma’s (2021) purpose-driven, relational view of PR, and Nwosu’s own theories on applying PR to conflict management and nation-building and Abigail Ogwezzy-Ndisika on African Communication Systems.
Across Africa, there is a growing demand for definitions that reflect the continent’s realities. In South Africa, scholars like Rensburg (2010) have called for the inclusion of ubuntu within the ethical framework of PR. Research in Kenya shows practitioners informally prioritising “community consent” and “elder mediation.” A key theme in the literature is the “definition–practice gap”: while African practitioners often operate with a culturally attuned understanding, official definitions tend to be derivative.
The 2025 NIPR definition directly addresses this disconnect by formalising an African-centred conception. It stands as the most comprehensive statement of this shift, integrating leadership, trust, development, and cultural respect.
Contributions to Global PR Literature
This manifesto makes several significant contributions:
1. Indigenisation of Theory: It adds a fourth major definitional pole—alongside the PRSA’s relationship focus, CIPR’s reputation focus, and the Mexican Statement’s strategic focus—that is explicitly leadership-driven, developmental, and culturally respectful.
2. Decolonisation of PR Education: Critiquing the dominance of Western textbooks gives African universities and professional bodies a legitimate intellectual basis to revise curricula.
3. Ethical and Developmental Turn: By linking PR directly to “inclusive development,” the profession aligns with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union Agenda 2063.
4. Historical Recovery: By documenting Africa’s pre-colonial PR equivalents, it counters the narrative that PR is a purely Western import and contributes to a growing literature on indigenous communication systems.
Biography
Emmanuel Dandaura is a Professor at Nassarawa State University, Keffi, Vice President of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), and a Senior Cultural Expert for the AU.
He is a Specialist in development communication, cultural restitution, and strategic communication. He recently led the African Union’s cultural restitution talks at UNESCO Mondiacult 2025 and is overseeing NIPR’s 2026 infrastructure development.
He will interrogate a critical subject in his inaugural lecture on 15 April. The title is “When Applause Lies: Communication, Power, and the War Between Reputation and Perception in Nigeria”.
Conclusion: An Essential Foundation
Redefining Public Relations for Greater Relevance is an important and timely publication. It is not a book offering simple solutions but a foundational work that raises essential questions. For PR students, it offers a valuable lens for critically examining their curriculum. For practitioners, it provides a solid ethical framework to guide their work. For leaders, it shows that in an era of fractured trust, a well-defined, ethically practised public relations is not a peripheral expense but a vital pillar of development and good governance.
The next volume in this conversation must focus on the “how”—how to train practitioners, how to evaluate new outcomes, and how to embed these principles within organisations resistant to change. But as a starting point, Prof. Dandaura and the NIPR have not simply rewritten a definition; they have posed a challenge: to build a profession that ceases polishing images and begins shaping behaviour.
Verdict: Essential reading for every African communications professional and a powerful case study for anyone, anywhere, who believes that PR should be more than just a corporate megaphone.
