The NIPR has, over the decades, built an enviable reputation as Nigeria’s foremost professional body for strategic communication, stakeholder engagement, reputation management and relationship building. Precisely because of that reputation, the circumstances described in this memoir invite reflection on whether greater dialogue, mediation and internal engagement might have produced a less divisive outcome.
Public relations professionals are often the first to counsel organisations on crisis communication, stakeholder engagement, reputation management and conflict resolution. They advocate dialogue before confrontation, mediation before litigation, and empathy before escalation.
But what happens when a veteran public relations practitioner believes those very principles were denied to him by the institutions that profess them?
That is the central question explored in MNI Versus MNIPR in NIPSS: Tackling Institutional Bullying, the newly released 205-page memoir by Yushau A. Shuaib, veteran public relations practitioner and Chief Executive Officer of Image Merchants Promotion Limited (IMPR), the publishers of PRNigeria and Spokespersons Digest.
Although public discourse surrounding the book has largely focused on the author’s legal and institutional dispute with the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), the memoir presents a far more layered narrative. Beyond recounting a personal conflict, it examines the complex intersection of institutional discipline, professional loyalty, constitutional rights and the human cost of organisational disputes.
