APCON To Sanction Sterling Bank For Easter ‘Insensitive’ Agege Bread Advert

APCON has said it will sanction Sterling bank for its Easter ‘Insensitive’ Agege bread advert.

Glamtush reports that the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) on Monday described as insensitive and provocative, an Easter advert by Sterling Bank Plc comparing the resurrection of Christ with the rising of Agege Bread.

APCON also said the advert copy was not submitted for approval before it was made public.

In a statement on Monday signed by its Registrar and Chief Executive, Olalekan Fadolapo, APCON said the advert was distasteful, noting that Sterling Bank Plc would be punished for the action.

The bank, in the now-deleted social media post over the weekend, had attracted criticisms as the same copy was sent to the email of the bank’s customers.

The copy showed a puffed, golden brown, halved Agege Bread with the caption, ‘Like Agege Bread, He Rose… Happy Easter’.

Many social media users had lambasted Sterling Bank Plc over the denigratory comparison and the bank had deleted the posts on its social media handles amid the swelling outrage, mostly by Christians.

The bank subsequently uploaded another copy of an opened tomb significant of Christ’s departure from the grave and added the caption, ‘…let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.’

Reacting, however, in its statement, APCON condemned the action of the bank which it said was blasphemous.