The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has introduced its public relations officers to new trends in social media management for effective communication with the media.
Mr Wale Adeniyi, the National Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the NCS,?disclosed this in an interview with?News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Owerri.
Adeniyi spoke at the training workshop organised for customs PROs and some reporters titled “Fostering Effective Customs-Media Relations’’.
He said that aim of the workshop was to create appreciable awareness in customs PROs, while updating them with contemporary developments in social media.
Adeniyi, however, said?the awareness creation activity was not meant for customs PROs alone, adding that the NCS was eager to expose its management to the?desirability of good public relations and?social media management.
“They need to know the time to talk to the press, the choice of communication platform and the kind of message they push out and how it will affect the way NCS conducts its operations,’’ he said. ??
He recalled that a similar workshop was organised for customs PROs in 2011, adding, however, that themes such as the?single window clearance system and social media?that were introduced in the current workshop?were not part of the 2011 programme.
Adeniyi said that the single window clearance system was?a recent aspect of customs administration in Africa, stressing that the system entailed an electronic clearance procedure that saved time and costs, while facilitating clearance.
He said that due to the new trends in clearance procedures, the NCS decided to introduce emerging clearance procedures into the workshop’s programme to engender better understanding of the procedures, while enhancing the effectiveness of clearance operations.
Adeniyisaid that the programme?would enable customs PROsto able to explain the single window clearance system to customs stakeholders in a lucid way, while facilitating media understanding of its concept to enable them?to inform the public?better. (NAN)