By Archibong Jeremiah
The Cross River State Government has disengaged Chris Parks Marketing Solution (CPMS) that has been consulting for the State Signage and Advertisement Agency (CRISSAA) since its creation by the Governor Liyel Imoke administration.
The disengagement according to the Director General of the Agency, Mr. Stanley Nsemo-Livingstone who spoke to CrossRiverWatch is “for lack of depth to fully cover the 18 Local Government Areas.”
According to him, “There has been enormous outcry in the State about collection and we understand with the people on their plight and we have dropped our rates, we are dialoguing with stakeholders. We have also gone through some change in our concessionaire process; CPMS has left now the process is decentralized as we have three different concessionaires for each senatorial district to enable total coverage.”
The CRISSAA DG went on to assert that the reason behind the decentralization of the concessionaires is not just to boost coverage but also to fully allow and expand the team and strengthen the local content law as well as still experimenting other possibilities.
“The breakdown is an experiment, when CPMS was in charge they were localized in the South, and they weren’t quite effective in the Central and North. What we are doing is trying different companies to see how breaking it down can work since we have tried the other.” He said.
As to other projects of CRISSA he said: “We are also on top gears with plans to establish a fabrication plant here that will serve the entire region where bill boards and other advertisement materials will be manufactured from to feed the region and possibly beyond. We have ordered some machines, the site is the Ayade Industrial park, some of the machines have arrived but more are still on transit. We are expecting welding machines, bending machines, glass writing machines and engraving machines, we are starting small but we will improve rapidly.”
Furthermore, he said: “We are trying to go into the aesthetics aspect of the job, beautifying certain areas of the State and we are starting from the South to iconize certain beautiful items in the State. We are starting with the Diamond tank which we are painting to tell a story of Calabar from the past 400 years to where we are now. Where we started, where we are going, the different vision of the past Governors and that of Ayade so that people can see the direction of where we are going.
“There is something about picture, it tells a lot more than words, we want this placed to be one of the tourism sites where the pictures tell the story, here will also be a site to sit out and relax. We just don’t want people to come and go like that but to add more value to their money by seeing the history of Nigeria as well as other interesting things.
“This is the biggest mural in Africa; there might be a mural in the world bigger than this. We are trying to get Guinness Book of Record team to come assess this because we want Cross River to be on the world map again. From here we will hit other Local Government to identify historic items to fresco.”
He concluded by disclosing that “We are about to host Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria, APCON event for the whole South East and South-South.”
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