Muoka, Ibietan of NCC Bag NIPR Fellowship
Two management staff of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC); Reuben Muoka, Director of Public Affairs, and Dr. Omoniyi Ibietan, Head, Media Relations in the Public Affairs Department have been inducted as Fellows of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (fnipr).
They were inducted during institute’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) and Conference held at the International Conference Centre in Abuja.
The Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC,
Professor Umar Garba Danbatta,in congratulating the duo, said the Commission is proud to have produced these two individuals who have been considered worthy of elevation to the fellowship cadre of the prestigious institution like the NIPR, and that their emergence resonates with two of the Commission’s core values; Excellence and Professionalism; which the Commission coincidentally shares with the NIPR.
Muoka, the Director of Public Affairs Department of the NCC, holds M.Sc. in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos with specialisation in Public Relations and Advertising, after a Postgraduate Diploma in the same field from the same University; and he had earlier obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Performing Arts from the University of Ilorin. Besides being a fellow of NIPR, he is also an associate of the Registered Practitioners of Advertising, (arpa).
He had worked for many years as Communications Editor in Vanguard Newspapers during which he also chaired the League of Communications Correspondents, one of the platforms that championed the deregulation of the telecom industry in Nigeria. He also worked for MTS First Wireless, Nigeria’s first mobile network operator, where he rose to the position of Deputy General Manager. In 1999, Muoka received a fellowship involving a Pan-African training and tour, leading to the award of a Diploma in Journalism, at the instance of the Egyptian Ministry of Information, and the African Journalists Union (AJU), in Cairo, Egypt.
Ibietan earned a PhD in Communication from North-West University in South Africa. He had earlier obtained MA in Communication and Language Arts from the University of Ibadan, a BA in Communication Arts from the University of Uyo, and a Journalism Diploma from the Moscow-based International Institute of Journalism, Abuja Campus. A noted advocate of freedom and democracy, he was Freedom House Nigeria Project’s Regional Media Researcher in the Niger Delta until his appointment in 2006 as Special Media Assistant to the Federal Minister of Information and Communication, during which he popularised the use of new media for public communication in Nigeria. He is a member of the African Council for Communication Education (ACCE) and the International Institute of Communications (IIC).
Ibietan joined the NCC in 2008 and was deployed to Legislative and Government Relations (LGR) Department where he was frontline liaison staff of the Commission with the National Assembly. Much later after the merging of the LGR Department with the Public Affairs Department in 2010, he served as Manager Media and Public Relations under Muoka’s supervision and became Senior Manager Media Management until January 2017 when he was redeployed to PAD’s emergent Online Media and Special Publication Unit, and subsequently designated as the head of the Unit. He also worked at the Consumer Information and Education Unit of the Commission’s Consumer Affairs Bureau (CAB) until his redeployment to PAD. He became an Assistant Director in January 2021 and was appointed Head Media Relations in July 2022.
