THE federal government of Nigeria through the minister of Information and Communications, Prof. Dora Akunyili has expressed commitment to the improvement of creative production infrastructure in Nigeria as a way to discourage Nigerian advertisers and their consulting agencies from patronizing foreign countries and foreign creative consultants, especially South Africa and the United Kingdom.
The minister who said this at a One-Day stakeholders’ public forum tagged ‘Advertising In A Recession’, held at the Lagos Sheraton hotel, Ikeja also alerted the audience of the dangers of such practice to the nation and the marketing communications industry. She said that, this practice is unfortunate and unacceptable, especially in the ongoing re-branding efforts of the present president Umar Yar’Adua administration. According to her, recent reports reveal that many advertising agencies, especially those with strong foreign affiliations spent billions in foreign exchange on location sites and shooting advert materials for their corporate clients out Nigeria.
The minister advised the affected advertising agencies practitioners in collaboration with their clients to start looking inwards and use the local creative energies available in the nation’s advertisement industry rather than rushing to South Africa, United Kingdom or any other foreign country to produce creative works and other advert materials at exorbitant costs which indirectly impacts negatively on their bottom-line.
In her words “The industry is the looser and it must fashion out ways in which advert agencies that employ the creative talents in  Nigeria will get support and those that still decide to go overseas will pay a price”. Dora Akunyili called for an administrative guideline, which will be endorsed by the information ministry, that will make adverts produced overseas unattractive. It is only by so doing that that teeming local talents in Nigeria will be encouraged.
She revealed that in the re-branding Nigeria project, the country have shown the way by not going to South Africa or the United Kingdom to look for logo, slogan or any other creative material.
The minister promised that as part of the solution to the rush by advertising agencies to foreign countries, the ministry of information and communication will work to ensure that the federal government would provide the necessary equipment, the necessary infrastructural support and an enabling environment to discourage such practice henceforth.  
She advised practitioners and other stakeholders that as they make efforts at focusing their professional energies at debating emerging global trends, they must not forget or ignore the peculiarities of the economy in which they operate, and the opportunities it offers.The media industry, an adjunct of the advertising industry, she admitted is facing the challenges posed by the ongoing global economic meltdown in terms of dwindling copy sales and advertisement revenue.
According to the minister, the shrinking readership base is not peculiar to the Nigeria media. It is a global crisis.
“The Financial Times of London recently reported that the newspaper and magazine industry could be decimated in 2009 with one out of every 10 print publications forced to reduce publication frequency by more than half, move online or close entirely. This is a frightening scenario”, she stated.