BREAKING NEWS, Media
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THE Nigerian government is willing to give all it takes to ensure that government-owned media will compete more favourably with their private counterparts. Lai Mohammed, minister of Information and Culture, gave the assurance while receiving the laurels won by the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN, at the Nigerian Media Merit Award 2015, said the situation whereby the private media were preferred to the public media was unacceptable.
“We believe that in terms of human resources, talent and equipment, even in terms of exposure, there is no reason why the publicly-funded media should not do better than any media houses in Nigeria and I am happy that you have blazed the trail by coming out to win these awards,” he said.
Mohammed said despite the fact that the competition was also open to the private media, the FRCN still won four awards, describing that as an eloquent testimony that the public media could do much better.
“We are determined to improve the quality, both in terms of engineering and content of the publicly-owned media houses in a manner that they will be able to perform much better than any media houses anywhere in Africa,” he said.
While advising the FRCN to consider the award as a tonic that would spur it to greater achievements, the minister urged the organisation to continue to invest in the development of compelling contents that will improve the quality of life of its audience and expand its reach.
“I think you should seize the opportunity and especially since you are a Federal Government-owned organisation, you can work very harmoniously with the Meteorological Agency and you should be able to have a programme on weather, and again another area that I think you should improve your content is on climate change…which is another topical issue that will interest Nigerians.
“All I am saying is that you need to go beyond your routine programmes and open new frontiers,” he advised.
According to Mohammed, other areas that will enrich the content of the FRCN are dedicated programmes on the youths, women, children and family affairs.
Earlier, Michael Oluwole, acting director general of FRCN, said the station had made history by winning four out of the five awards in contention at the prestigious Nigeria Media Merit.
The FRCN won the Station of the Year; Best Presenter of the Year, Best Producer of the year awards.
— Mar 2, 2016 @ 15:40 GMT
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