By Franklin Ozekhome
There is a tendency among younger practitioners to imagine Nigerian advertising as a relatively recent industry, as though it began with the great television commercials of the 1980s, exploded with telecoms in the early 2000s, and finally became sophisticated when digital arrived.
The real history is considerably older, stranger, and more interesting. Long before the first agency opened its doors, Nigerians were already using town criers, oral performance, market display, symbols, signs and recommendation to influence behaviour. Print formalised part of that practice in the nineteenth century, with Iwe Iroyin, first published in 1859, carrying early announcements and commercial communication. And, organised agency advertising came later.
By 1928, forms of commercial communication were already deeply embedded in Nigerian life. The arrival of organised agency advertising gave them a new structure, setting in motion an industry that would produce some of the continent’s most formidable commercial personalities, creative minds, institutional rivalries and advertising empires.
READ ALSO:What does advertising really do for a brand?
And that story begins in Lagos.
Street Scene in Lagos @UN Media
Act I: The Prequel — The Island Aristocracy (1928 – 1970)
The Genesis: Broad Street’s Commercial Imperium
Before advertising became a localized multi-billion Nigerian industry, it operated principally as an instrument of foreign trade. The landscape of late-1920s Lagos was a shifting web of colonial shipping berths, merchant houses, department stores,commercial outposts, and Afro-Brazilian masonry architecture. In 1928, the British trading interests that would shortly be consolidated into the United Africa Company (UAC), alongside Lever Brothers International, encountered an obstacle. To rapidly accelerate the consumption of unfamiliar manufactured imports like specialized soap formulas, condensed milk, and sewing machines among a sprawling, linguistically fragmented, and largely non-literate population, they required a systematic publicity machine.
To resolve this, these corporate interests established West African Publicity Limited (WAP) on Lagos Island. This single entity became the operational ‘Big Bang’ of organized agency advertising in Nigeria. WAP remained an important institutional base for decades before the business became LINTAS (Lever International Advertising Services) in 1964. Within the agency, senior management remained heavily expatriate-controlled, while Nigerian practitioners developed through the creative, client service, media, production, and administrative ranks.
The Ancestral Lineage of Nigerian Advertising
The Theatre of Extraction: Cinema Reels and the Saro Elite
On the pre-independence Island, advertising was a profoundly sensory performance rather than an abstract mathematical media metric. There were no digital screens, automated production workflows or overnight file transfers. Commercial communication depended on hands, paint, type, film, printing presses and physical structures placed in the path of human beings.
Outdoor advertising became one of the industry’s earliest specialist forms. Afromedia Nigeria Limited was incorporated in October 1959 after developing out of the West African Publicity lineage, eventually becoming one of the defining companies in Nigerian outdoor advertising. The company helped move the medium beyond imported posters towards locally produced outdoor material and structures suited to the Nigerian environment.
Billboards in Surulere @Legot.ng
Cinema also became an important advertising environment during the mid-century period. Pearl & Dean pioneered cinema advertising production, with commercial films and animations remembered by audiences of the era. Lagos cinemas such as Rex, Regal and Capitol formed part of a thriving cinema culture long before television became the dominant commercial screen.
Power Structure: Nigerian artists, writers, client-service executives and other practitioners increasingly supplied the cultural intelligence and execution the market required, while ownership and corporate control remained largely expatriate through much of the early period.
During this era, Lagosians attended screenings at historic venues including Rex Cinema, the Regal, and Glover Memorial Hall. Before the feature films commenced, cinema advertising added moving commercial imagery to an industry already working through print, outdoor, radio, signs, and retail display. The creative engine driving much of this imagery consisted of local artists, illustrators, writers, broadcasters, and studio craftsmen who constructed heavy presentation and display materials, and prepared radio advertising scripts for a rapidly expanding broadcast environment.
The studio itself was a different world. Artwork was hand-rendered. Lettering required actual lettering. Layouts were physically assembled. Illustration and advertising sat much closer to fine art, broadcasting, theatre and publishing than the later departmental structures of agency life might suggest.
The careers of people such as Erhabor Emokpae illustrate how porous those worlds were. Emokpae joined West African Publicity as a visual artist in the late 1950s and later rose within advertising while building a parallel reputation as one of Nigeria’s significant modern artists. Ted Mukoro came into advertising through broadcasting and performance, bringing a sensibility shaped as much by theatre and voice as by conventional commercial writing. Advertising was drawing talent from everywhere because there was not yet a neat professional pipeline producing “advertising people”.
The early adman could be an illustrator in the morning, a broadcaster by afternoon, a playwright at night and a commercial copywriter when the client brief arrived. Professional identities were still fluid, with talent moving easily across art, media, performance and commerce.
The Glass Ceiling: Subjugation of the Native Intelligentsia
The structural constraint defining the pre-1970s Nigerian adman was his confinement beneath a powerful corporate glass ceiling. Despite the creative contribution of Nigerians inside these organisations, the corporate hierarchy remained largely expatriate-controlled through much of the period. A Nigerian copywriter, illustrator or client-service executive could possess an intuitive grasp of the linguistic nuances used by traders at Balogun Market or dockworkers at the Apapa ports, yet the highest levels of agency ownership and control remained largely expatriate.
Foreign-backed agencies including Lintas, Ogilvy Benson & Mather and Grant occupied much of the industry’s institutional power, while Nigerian practitioners learned client service, creative production, media and agency management from inside businesses they did not yet control. That generation would become critical.
Olu Falomo joined West African Publicity in 1963 as a trainee Client Service Executive and rose through the profession before later establishing Forum Advertising. Chris Doghudje developed through OBM and Lintas and eventually rose to the highest levels of agency management. Steve Omojafor moved from journalism into Lintas, where his development included professional training in Britain. Ted Mukoro later moved into Lintas creative, where he became one of Nigerian advertising’s most distinctive voices and rose within an industry whose highest levels of control were still largely expatriate.
The importance of this period is easily misunderstood. These Nigerians were acquiring the operating knowledge of the business: how multinational clients thought, how agencies made money, how pitches were structured, how work was produced and how relationships were managed. By the time political independence arrived in 1960, a generation of practitioners had begun accumulating the experience necessary for another form of independence. That experience would become critical when the ownership structure of the industry began to change in the following decade.
The next battle would be commercial.
The chronicle continues in Admen of Lagos (Part II):
The Great Migration — Shobanjo & The Corporate Titans, 1970–1989
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