TheCable

Lanre Issa-Onilu is the new national publicity secretary of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

Issa-Onilu’s appointment was ratified at the party’s national working committee (NWC) in Abuja on Friday.

He ran for the position at the party’s elective convention that held in June but lost to Bolaji Abdullahi. Abdullahi later resigned from the position and defected to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

They are both from Kwara state.

The new spokesman was said to have been backed by President Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Tinubu, a national leader of the party, at the convention but however he lost, coming second.

Yekini Nabena was appointed acting national publicity secretary after Abdullahi resigned on August 1.

Issa-Onilu has worked as journalist for 15 years and is a specialist in strategic public communications planning.

The new spokesman is a graduate of mass communication from the University of Lagos and holds a master’s in integrated marketing communications from West Virginia University, US.

He was an assistant editor of Sunday ThisDay. Before he joined ThisDay, he was news editor at the Comet Newspapers.

Issa-Onilu is a corporate member of the International Communications Conference (ICC) at the Baruch College Ssate university of New York, US. He is also an associate member of the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) and an associate member of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

He has written many papers on crisis communication and public communication among other topics.