Photo: ARCON Director -General, Dr. Olalekan Fadolapo
The Federal Government has directed the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCON) to esure that payment for advertising services must be made within 45 days, in line with global best practices and the Advertising Industry Standards of Practice (AISOP).
In a statement by Dr. Olalekan Fadolapo, Director-General of ARCON, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Alhaji Mohammed Idris, directed ARCON to collaborate with the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and the Heads of Advertising Sectoral Groups to resolve outstanding industry debts and enforce strict adherence to payment thresholds by all stakeholders.
ARCON is a key parastatal under the Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation, responsible for regulating, controlling, and setting standards for advertising, advertisement, and marketing communication in Nigeria.
To give full effect to his directive, ARCON has outlined three clear and enforceable pillars through which the resolution of advertising debt and adherence to payment standards will be pursued.
The first is through the Credit Policy and Payment Threshold.
Where payment is not made within this window, interest will accrue at the prevailing market rate.
The directive mandates full compliance for all Media Purchase Orders (MPOs) and Local Purchase Orders (LPOs) issued for media and advertising services.
The Minister has called on all parties including advertisers, agencies, and media houses to maintain transparency in their dealings, ensuring a structured and disciplined payment process across Nigeria’s advertising ecosystem.
This provision, the Minister has emphasised, is not optional. It is a cornerstone of the Federal Government’s policy of protecting the vulnerability of media houses, attracting new media assets investment, guaranteeing job security, ensuring industry stability, and generating stable advertising revenue for media operators.
Second, while advertisers and business owners remain free to discharge, disengage or terminate agreements with their advertising agencies, ARCON had ab initio mandated that no advertiser may proceed to brief a new agency until all outstanding financial obligations with the outgoing agency have been fully reconciled and settled.
Third, ARCON has established a dedicated Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) desk which will serve as a neutral platform for mediation, conciliation and arbitration to achieve the harmonious settlement of industry disputes.
This mechanism is designed to provide faster, less adversarial resolution pathways that will prevent disagreements from festering into the kind of protracted, multi-year debts that have long undermined the health of the industry.