(MRA/IFEX) – On 30 November 2005, a combined team of soldiers and policemen, apparently acting on the orders of the federal government, seized the Bayelsa State-owned radio station, Glory FM, located in Yenogoa, the state capital in the Niger Delta region. The station’s general manager, Brighten Sorgwe, was also arrested. Over 200 armed policemen and […]
(MRA/IFEX) – On 30 November 2005, a combined team of soldiers and policemen, apparently acting on the orders of the federal government, seized the Bayelsa State-owned radio station, Glory FM, located in Yenogoa, the state capital in the Niger Delta region. The station’s general manager, Brighten Sorgwe, was also arrested.
Over 200 armed policemen and military officers are reported to have stormed the radio station as early as 5:30 a.m. (local time). Some of the invading security guards demanded to see the station’s director of engineering services and when he was shown to them, they ordered the station’s manager to take them to the transmitter control room, where they directed him to shut down the station, which he did. They then chased away the workers on duty and sent back other workers who reported for duty later in the morning. About 60 policemen are stationed at the premises to ensure that the station does not transmit signals.
But the Bayelsa State Police Commissioner Hafiz Ringim said the policemen were placed at the radio station to protect it from being attacked by vandals.
Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha of Bayelsa State, which owns the radio station, has been engaged in a battle of wits with the federal government since his arrest in London in September 2005 on charges of money laundering. He returned to Nigeria on November 20, after escaping from the United Kingdom in violation of the condition of his bail requiring him not to leave London.
Following the propaganda war between the radio station and the federal government-owned and controlled Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), the regulatory authority, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), is reported to have put the station under watch and ordered it to send tapes of its major news bulletins to the Commission for scrutiny. However, the NTA continues to broadcast undisturbed and although it is now the only broadcast outlet operating in the state, it carries only news and views supportive of the federal government’s position in the dispute.
The NBC’s head of public affairs, Mark Ojiah, has denied the Commission’s involvement in the closure, saying: “We do not know where the order came from. Our offices in Port Harcourt and Benin have not given us any explanation on the issue.”
