FG approves 47 FM, 5 Community, 4 DTT Radio stations
By Felicia Nwosu
The Federal Government has approved the licenses of 47 FM Radio stations, 5 Community Radio and 4 DTT Radio stations, making a total of 67 new broadcast stations across the country. In all, the populace will be exposed to a total number of 473 broadcast stations approved by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. Malam Balarabe Shehu Ilelah, Director- General of the National Broadcasting Commission, NBC, stated this in Abuja, noting that the Commission would soon commence issuing the licences.
The DG who proudly described the approval as a great milestone in furthering pluralism and freedom of expression also disclosed that presently, there are about 740 functional broadcast stations in the country while expressing hope for future expansion and growth of the industry across the nation.
Ilelah explained the need to boost manpower capacity an pointed out that the President had approved for NBC to recruit more staff that will monitor broadcast stations in all parts of the country as well as acquire state-of-the-art nationwide broadcast monitoring equipment for the forthcoming election. He added that in spite of the challenges with the implementation of the Digital Switch Over (DSO), the Commission is determined to deliver to Nigerians life-changing digital broadcasting using Simulcrypt and working in collaboration with NTA Star Nigeria and ITS.
NBC also disclosed that 302 stations have been sanctioned for violating the 2023 election electioneering campaign which commenced four months ago.
Mrs. Franca Ayitor, the Director of NBC Broadcast Management used the opportunity to give the breakdown of the number of the stations that were sanctioned.
According to her, erring stations have two weeks to pay the fines failure of which will lead to graduation of fines.
According to Ayitor, 17 stations were fined while 196 stations were warned. She said 63 stations were cautioned while 93 stations were reprimanded. She added that 70 percent of stations had paid the fines. Ayitor said the affected stations did not follow the guidelines for political programming content and quality which was prepared by the commission and shared to the stations.
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