The media and maritime business sector heartily pour encomiums on a Public Relations guru, Hajia Lami Tumaka, as she celebrates her birthday in January, 2023, writes Innocent Chukwu
It has been celebration galore for Hajia Lami Tumaka and her family and acquaintances since the beginning of 2023 as she turns 63 years on Saturday, January 14. Her birthday is being celebrated with and for her by different groups of people in the country due to her wide friendship base which cuts across geo-political zones.
This quintessential belle is regarded by many as the “Mother of the Maritime Sector.” She is impeccably beautiful in manners as well as in looks. Ever attractive, smiley, charming, jovial, motherly, likeable and charismatic, Tumaka represents many things to different people in the maritime industry and outside the sector.
To some, she is the benevolent, caring belle, a mother, aunty, sister from another mother and a confidant. And for numerous others, Hajia Tumaka is just a dependable friend.
Tumaka hypnotizes everybody that comes across her with her charismatic appeals which manifest in soft, soothing words and irresistible smiles. Her broad smiles and humane spirit which emphasize her big influence also confer on her the garb of a distinctive social creature.
These qualities have made Tumaka to become the most celebrated feminine public figure in the maritime sector. She is a conflict resolution expert, a crisis manager, a bridge builder, mentor, inspiration, as well as a refuge in the storm to all her relationships when they are faced with relative challenges.
The Public Relations amazon is arguably the most publicized PR expert in the sector. This is due to her big influence on the maritime media. In her professional PR practice, she is as intelligent as she is beautiful and appears to have a team of angelic guide that helps her to be mostly successful in her official engagements. In practical terms, Tumaka possesses a charming charisma that could disarm anyone who had one grievance or the other against the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) where she spent 22 rewarding years serving in different departments.
For this reason, the agency found in her an irreplaceable asset in the management of its public image. Having retired from NIMASA in 2020, Tumaka is still committed to the industry through various interventions that jealously protect the reputation of the agency. She is deeply involved in the “Blue Economy Co-ordinating Group” being championed by Dakuku Peterside, a former Director General of NIMASA.
Notably, Hajia Tumaka’s emotional contributions to the development of the maritime business Public Relations practice can be said to be higher than any other. Some people’s charities flow from their minds. But Tumaka’s charities and bowels of magnanimity flow from the depth of her heart. This is why she remained the most valuable PR personality among the maritime media while she was NIMASA’s public image maker.
Hajia Tumaka is fondly addressed as the “Iyalode (First Lady) of NIMASA” and the “Queen of PR.” She is a world renown first-rate Strategic Communications professional who headed the NIMASA Public Relations Unit at three different periods. On two of those three occasions she was called upon by the agency’s management to use her professional expertise to navigate NIMASA out of some crises that threatened to erode stakeholders’ confidence in the agency.
Tumaka is a strategic Public Relations Manager who deployed strategic measures in handling NIMASA’s public interface because she understood the strategic nature of the agency in Nigeria’s economy. Thus, she remained strategic all through in her engagement of the maritime media and other critical stakeholders and supporting allies of NIMASA.
What won her media admiration and media sympathy for the agency she served in, NIMASA is her closeness to individual journalists and maritime media groups, as well as her perceived genuine interest in the personal lives of journalists in the industry. She would felicitate with them in times of celebrations and condole with them in times of bereavement.
In her quest to leave a concrete legacy in NIMASA public interface, Tumaka designed a communication policy that would ensure that only the Director General and Head Strategic Communications Department would be the official spokespersons of NIMASA. The media icon was born on January 14, 1960.
