Vice Chancellor of the Rivers State University, Prof Nlerum Okogbule, has charged students of the Nigeria Institute of Public Relations Department of the university on high decorum that would command the needed respect as well as make them outstanding anywhere they find themselves.
Okogbule said this in his address as the special guest of honor at the one, day programme to commemorate the world Public Relations Day organised by the  Nigeria Institute of Public Relations in Rivers State.
The Vice Chancellor, who was represented by the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Academics, Valentine Pepple said there was need to continue to educate the students for effective performance in future.
“The essence of organising the programme is to continue to educate people as many at time lots of people do not understand what we mean by Public Relations and we know that Public Relations department play a key role in any organisation.
“Public Relations can either promote or destroy, so harnessing the power of Public Relations is very important as such we are mostly encouraging our students to be serious, being a very important department in every organisation.
The Head Corporate Communication, Indorama Eleme Petro chemical, Dr . Jossy  Nwokocha, in his keynote  address, said the power of public relations is the panacea of effective PR of a particular company.
“You can see that PR is not just about your company, PR is all about humanity, how to find solutions to the problems of humanity.
“The world Public Relations day, reminds PR practitioners to understand the power of Public Relations and to properly utilise it,” Dr Nwokocha added.
Earlier, the chairman of NIPR in Rivers State and the former Commissioner of Information and communications, Paulinus Nsirim said the association under his watch will ensure those” who have the what it takes will be allowed to practice public relations in the state.
“We are going to ensure that only those, who have this requisite certification practice Public Relations because it is in the interest of the organisation to have experts.
“You cannot have a carpenter becoming a medical doctor. You also cannot have a doctor trying to be an engineer. These are professions, so we must ensure in this country and in this state that things go the right way,” Nsirim added.
The Tide  source reports that  the theme of the this year’s NIPR celebration is, “Harnessing the Power of Public Relations”.