BREAKING NEWS, Media
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| By Okello Oculi |
PROFESSOR Attahiru Jega, former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has called on Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari to reform laws created under military rule to protect the relative autonomy of public media.
This, according to Jega, will ensure that they are ‘’not merely government broadcasters who mortgage public interest’’ but do provide information that can ‘’make Nigerians effective citizens’’ who participate in governance so that ‘’elected officials are held to account and quickly respond to needs of the people’’.
At a lecture organised by the National Broadcasting Corporation, NBC, on Wednesday, August 24, in Abuja, The former INEC chairman asserted that the 1977 military decree that created the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, and the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN, centralised control, ownership and funding of broadcasting media in order to achieve their ‘’conformity’’, and be ‘’ineffective in exercising its oversight over the state’’.
Professor Jega recalled that, as former chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, the leadership of NBC made considerable effort to resist pressures from government to make the media regulator ‘’conflate’’ with their interests including ‘’denying access to even those opposition groups willing to pay’’ for their views to be broadcast.
He insisted that in the commitment and effort to achieve incremental deepening of Nigeria’s democracy, the media should adopt the Catholic Church’s vow that marriage may not be perfect but each couple swears to uphold it ‘’till death do us part’’.
John Momoh, chairman of the Channels Television, who will assume office of the chairman of the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria, BON, on January 1, 2017, urged broadcasters to creatively dare to tow the thin line between protecting the public interest by reporting the truth and avoiding the fury of government officials. He recalled hitting a storm of disapprovals after reporting President Shehu Shagari travelling on an official trip to India on the same day that a public building was on fire.
Momoh proposed that public broadcast institutions should get their independent income from licence fees paid by the more than 20 million Nigerians who own television and radio sets; while leaving the private broadcasters to struggle for shares in the commercial advertisement market. The National Assembly would have to amend the constitutional provision that such licence fees should be collected by local governments.
This view was supported by Tom Adaba, founder chief executive of NBC, who also insisted with the transition to digital broadcasting and the resultant explosion of numbers of providers from the current 453, there is urgent need to focus on creative staff who are also offered intensive and sustained training while opening doors to creative providers of programme contents from outside existing staff.
Ralph Akinfeleye, a professor of Mass Communications at the University of Lagos, insisted that just universities receive their licences from the National University Commission, NUC, the power to licence broadcast providers should be transferred from the presidency NBC.
Also, Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, the newly appoint director general of NBC, stated that the ‘’NBC Annual Lecture’’ series shall continue to be maintained as a significant national tool for celebrating the ‘’importance of NBC’s continuing engagement of current affairs’’.
— Aug 25, 2016 @ 6:10 GMT
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