The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has kicked against the decision by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to revoke the operation licenses of some notable broadcasting stations in Nigeria over claims that they are indebted to the NBC.
Recall that News Band reported that the National Broadcasting Commission revoked the broadcast licences of Silverbird TV, AIT, Raypower FM, Rhythm FM, amongst others.
Read the full story below to see all the affected media outfits:
NBC revokes Silverbird, AIT, Raypower, others’ broadcast licences
HURIWA, worried over NBC’s claims that it revoked their licenses over failure to renew their broadcasting rights, described it as “nebulous and superfluous” and “totally and completely unacceptable”
Reacting, it insisted that it is a decision that was predetermined, authored, and unleashed directly from the office of Mr. President and targeted at clipping the wings of independent voices.
The civil rights organisation, in a press release, said that it is a coup against media pluralism.
The decision, it said, is critical and fundamental functions of the media that the federal government is not comfortable with and these views of media experts are entirely adopted by HURIWA.
The statement by HURIWA continues:
“The fact is that for many people today the media are the main source of their knowledge and entertainment and are part of the very structure of their lives. In the 1980s, sys media historians, it was estimated that out of an average seventy year lifespan of a ‘Western person’ seven whole years were likely to be spent viewing television.
“Nowadays there is a shift from television to new media: when we factor in the time spent engage in other computer-mediated communication (CMC) and mobile telephony, the average Western individual spends well over 10 percent of their life focusing on a screen, involved with media of various forms.
“People truly live in a media-world. It is important to note, though, that there is still a global split or digital divide between those people who have unlimited media access and those who do not.
“This split can be experienced within one society where there is a big division between rich and poor or between countries or different global regions. Africa, for instance, has an average of 2.7 telephone lines for every 100 people, and only1.3 percent of the population have personal computers (Hudson 2006, p.312).
“By contrast Australia is estimated to have over 40 phone lines and PCs per 100 members of the population (Hudson 2006, p.312). Figures from 2007 indicate that internet penetration in Africa is lower that 4 percent, whereas in Australia it is over 70 percent www.internetworldstats.com.
“The government of president Muhammadu Buhari lacks transparency and accountability. The government’s financial policies are opaque and because there is no in intension to infuse transparency and accountability as the core modus operandi and the fundamental objectives of the current administration, therefore the only way to to hide the truth is to shut out the real, unbiased, and raw information about government financial transactions and the way to do that is to attack the media and so it is clear that this decision has been long in coming because the minister of information, Mr. Lai Mohammed has always told Nigerians about the plot of government to clamp down on independent media.
“Not long ago, a lot of bills emanated at the national assembly aimed at whittling down the powers of independent media but the voice of the people defeated this sinister plot.
“So this is just a manifestation of dictatorship and tyranny because if a commercial dispute should arise regarding payments of licensing fees or renewal fees, there are processes and mechanism of arbitration to sort out these administrative issues rather than revoke operational licenses of media houses that provide employments to thousands of Nigerians in this period of economic austerity.
“This decision is provocative and undemocratic. By the way, does government pay money for the public relations stories by way of press statements that these broadcasting stations air for this same government?
“So why the use of sledge hammer to kill off independent voices in the media in bid to kill off their willpower to exercise their functions s conscience of the nation as stipulated under section 22 of the 1999 constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria?
“We ask the government to revoke the revocation of these licenses now and invite these stations to resolve the commercial disputes the government regulatory body have with them. Government should not be the creator of unemployment, the statement concluded.