The Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria's Advertising Standard Panel last week announced it will sanction print media that publish unregistered advertisements, allAfrica reported.

ASP made the announcement while on a tour of print media outlets in Lagos. The group said only registered advertisements bearing certificates of approval by APCON will be allowed to publish in the print media.

The newly-constituted Advertising Standard Panel of the APCON was established to ensure that only safe and certified advertisements are published, according to allAfrica.

Flora Archibong, of the Newspapers Properietors Association of Nigeria, said the APN will help print media to better regulate the content of adverts, just as the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria helps to regulate broadcast.

"...we, on our part, cannot sit by and watch the business fall into disrepute. So as a matter of necessity, we will soon embark on the shutting down of some advertisements that are not approved," she said, according to allAfrica. "...henceforth any advertisement that is not carrying the 'Certificate of Approval' stamp by the ASP will be sanctioned as well as the newspaper that publishes it. We have to sanitize the industry. We have to sanitize the business of advertising for our good."

According to the agency, "the Nigerian code of Advertising Practice and Sales Promotion requires advertisements to be legal, honest, decent and truthful, with a sense of responsibility both to the consumer and the society," the allAfrica article stated.

In the second quarter of the year, APCON plans to organise a stakeholders meeting to announce the campaign, and a general publishers' meeting is slated to be held in April.