Nigerian Army School of Public Relations plans new courses

The Nigerian Army School of Public Relations and Information (NASPRI), Lagos, says it will add more courses to its curriculum if it gains accreditation from the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE).

The Commandant, Col. John Agim, disclosed the plan on Wednesday in Lagos in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

Agim said that the courses would only be added after NBTE would have accorded the institution the status of a polytechnic.

“The school is collaborating with the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations to get the National Body for Technical Education to accredit it.

“We are planning to make the school run different courses; right now, we have news reporting, photography, video and graphic design but what we intend to do first is to get the courses accredited.

“We intend to have mass communication, graphic design and graphic arts, a department of photography that will take care of everything in photography.

“We also intend to have a diploma course in Public Relations,’’ Agim said.

He added that though the school had not started training civilians, few corporate organisations have been relating with it, supporting and being really helpful.

“When the school gets approval, we will have both the military and civilians taking lectures and presently, we have staffers of Ministry of Defence who are lecturing here,’’ he said.

The commandant said that NASPRI was a centre for NIPR examination with which it had been collaborating for a long time.

He said that as a graduate of the school, there were some courses which a person would skip while taking courses from NIPR.

“As soon as the school is given accreditation, there are some courses and levels that you will skip in NIPR being a graduate of this school.

“This is because the courses we are doing are similar to those of the NIPR,’’ Agim said.

He added that students of the school were sent out for industrial attachments in different fields to specialise on the course they were undergoing in the school.

“In NASPRI now we are training the Army, Navy, Airforce personnel information managers and I can tell you that our products are doing very well in the field.

“Although we have infrastructure problems, what we are using to compensate for that is the rich content of the course.

“I have some students that after graduation they gain admission into some tertiary institutions and they are always ahead of other students because they have already offered some of the courses,’’ he said.

Agim added that though the course run quarterly, their rich contents are priceless and important to every student of public relations.