(MRA/IFEX) – On 28 March 2006, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Nigeria’s regulatory agency for the broadcast media, imposed sweeping sanctions, including a partial shutdown, on a privately-owned radio station, Freedom Radio, for allegedly violating the Nigeria Broadcasting Code. The NBC banned the station, based in Kano in northwest Nigeria, from broadcasting between 5:00 p.m. […]
(MRA/IFEX) – On 28 March 2006, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Nigeria’s regulatory agency for the broadcast media, imposed sweeping sanctions, including a partial shutdown, on a privately-owned radio station, Freedom Radio, for allegedly violating the Nigeria Broadcasting Code.
The NBC banned the station, based in Kano in northwest Nigeria, from broadcasting between 5:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. daily. In addition, Freedom Radio was ordered to pay the sum of N200,000 (approx. US$1,600) within 48 hours.
The station was also banned from broadcasting any political programmes, even after the present restriction on its broadcasting period is rescinded. The station was banned from airing specific programmes, such as: “Special programme”; “Kowa ya tuna bara”; “Kowane Gauta”; and “Kowane Tsuntsu”.
In a 27 March letter signed by NBC Director General Dr. Silas Babajiya Yisa and addressed to the General Manager of Freedom Radio, the NBC accused the station of not complying with political broadcast regulations of the Nigeria Broadcasting Code as well as violating regulations on talk show programming.
The NBC alleged that its monitoring reports of the station’s political and talk-show programmes “indicated that the maturity required of such programmes was still lacking, with guests and callers making unguarded comments that violate provisions of the NBC Code, always tending to overheat the polity.”
The Commission claimed that its action was informed by the inability of the anchor persons on the station to handle the banned programmes professionally over time, from 2005 to date.
But the station denied the charges, saying the NBC’s action was intended to stifle dissenting opinion in the country.
Mr. Mouktar Mohammed, a retired officer of the Nigerian Air Force and chairman of the board of directors of the station, said the NBC’s action was a political vendetta. He noted that the Commission did not give the station a fair hearing, as required by the Nigerian Broadcasting Code, before taking the decision to ban some of its political programmes and apply the other sanctions.
Mohammed said Freedom Radio does not broadcast programmes capable of jeopardizing peace in the country, observing that the action of the NBC was a deliberate attempt to deprive citizens of a free and independent source of information in a supposedly democratic country.
Freedom Radio was licensed in 2002 and commenced operation on 1 December 2003. It is owned by Alhaji Bashir Dalhatu, a member of the newly formed opposition political party, the Advanced Congress of Democrats (ACD). The station broadcasts in 10 languages, including major Nigerian languages such as Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Kanuri, Ebira, Fufulde, and Igala, in addition to English, French and Arabic. Its signals are received in the northern Nigerian states of Kano, Jigawa, Katsina, Kaduna, Plateau and Bauchi.
