CAREER WOMAN OF THE WEEK: Meet Aishat Onusi, the new media Amazon projecting Ogbeh’s great works at agric ministry
By AZUH AMATUS
“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavour” – Vince Lombardi
The above quote best summarizes how ‘Our Career Woman of the Week’ – Mrs. Aishat Ayijimoh Onusi lives her life and does her job.
She is an astute professional known for hard work and integrity, a dogged performer and media career woman whose experiences span the traditional and new media in the Nigerian communication space.
Her dedication to duty, exemplary job performance to attain excellence in her chosen field is simply legendary. We dedicate this edition of our ‘CAREER WOMAN’ to celebrate the lady who has managed to balance family and career life exceptionally well.
Mrs. Onusi is the Adviser on New Media to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh – a position that requires her to manage the online communication and digital engagement for the office of the Hon. Minister and the Ministry as a whole.
Since her assumption of office a little over a year ago, Onusi has left nobody in doubt about the in-depth knowledge of the relatively new media genre.
Apart from pioneering novel and effective social Media strategies that better meet the communication needs of a large and extensive government service organization, her work has led to maximum exposure for the ministry thus creating and promoting a robust image for the ministry and the minister to the envy of their pairs.
The Social media revolution sweeping the world has brought with it the challenge of competent personnel to effectively and efficiently deploy the technological innovation so that its multifarious advantages can be made beneficial to institutions and personalities that want to gain from the development.
Onusi has proven her acumen to actively engage members of the public through interactive platforms, mass dissemination of organizational information and news items, getting critical feedback from target audience and eliminating existing communication barriers that hitherto bred distrust among institutions, public figures, business concerns and their complex publics.
The highly interactive nature of the various online platforms of the ministry of agriculture under Onusi’s efficient management has enabled the ministry to gauge with ease, the effectiveness of its various engagements, policy implementation and messaging to its various publics.
Its critical stakeholders have continued to adopt the platforms as a quick, easy and cost free channel of voicing their commendations and complaints (if any) on the policies and programmes of the Ministry.
The feedback thus generated has allowed the ministry to reinforce its positive messages while realigning those not well received or understood.
Needless to say that Onusi’s dexterity and professional handling of the Ministry’s social media platforms and her attitude to work generally, has continue to win her admiration from friends, commendation from superiors and accolades from her professional colleagues.
Nnamdi Odikpo, her former colleague at the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) said: “When words aptly capture action, they tend to be profound. So, I will use these words and leave the reader to imagine how deeply I mean them, because I deeply do and I am convinced beyond doubt that they truly represent this person – astute, calm, resilient and deserving.
I have known Ayi for more than a decade and she is as professional as you can get and as engaging as you can dare intellectually. In many ways, she represents my vision of the ideal Nigerian career woman, poised to overcome, yet retaining her core form”.
Of her penchant for excellence, however, Onusi often says: “I strongly believe in the saying that we are what we repeatedly do. So, I strive for excellence in everything I do.” In view of her sterling and unparalleled exploits in the social media arena in the country, it is trite to conclude that Mrs. Aishat Ayijimoh Onusi remains a compelling catalyst that continues to define and attract more women to take up a career in the media industry.
