…Says ghost foreign interests infiltrating broadcast space
…Urges NSA NIA, NBC ARCON to step in
The Chairman, Board Of Trustees (BOT) Northern Broadcast Media Owners Association, (NBMOA), Alhaji (Dr.) Ahmed Tijjani Ramalan has called on President Bola Tinubu to intervene in the Nigerian broadcast Industry for an urgent holistic regulatory overhaul in order to arrest its slide and prevention of further Local TV and Radio Stations shutdown across the country.
Ramalan said, “Some foreign TV channels operations in Nigeria is illegal and against the country’s national, economic, social and Security Interest”.
He urged the national broadcasting commission, (NBC), Advertising Regulatory Council Of Nigeria (ARCON), to enforce its regulatory powers by banning the infiltration of unlicensed international TV channels into the Nigerian broadcast spectrum, which he noted has resulted in the capital flight of over 90% commercial revenues of the Nigerian Advertising market; this, he said, must be stopped in order to save the indigenous NBC ‘licenced’ TV channels from collapse.
The NBMOA BOT Chairman opined that these unregulated broadcasters (cloned in the complete DNA of indigenous stations) “do not have any significant infrastructural investment in Nigeria. According to him, they do not have any BANKABLE or TAXABLE income in Nigeria”.
He further said: “They deliberately have no human-capital developmental impact on Nigerian media professionals, as they endlessly flood Nigerian young viewers with Asian and European TV series of programmes while carting away capital flight of about 90% of the nation’s advertising revenue, and thereby encroaching on the legitimate revenues that should ordinarily accrue to bona-fide indigenous NBC Licenced TV channels in the country.
According to him, maintaining such a stance will ultimately lead to a massive loss of broadcast-related jobs, and present a formidable threat to, not only the nation’s economy, but also a veritable threat to Nigeria’s security.
Dr. Ramalan appealed to the President, as a matter of National Security, to direct the banning by the Minister of Information and National Orientation, the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) National Intelligence Agency (NIA) Department of State Security Service (DSS), EFCC NFIU FIRS, NBC and ARCON to compile a comprehensive lists of all unlicensed foreign broadcast media organisations ‘ghosting’ as indigenous broadcast stations for banning, as well as forensic auditing of their illegal commercial advertising media operations and operating their headquarters outside the country while deliberately targeting, not Sahel West Africa, but particularly Northern Nigeria.
He cited other recent threats to the nation’s currency and economy, “such as the very recent ‘BINANCEGATE’, which had the efontery and skill to stimulate or depress the Naira from cyberspace.
The NBMOA BOT Chairman concluded by drawing the attention of the Security, Intel and regulatory agencies of Government that these unlicensed TV stations and other ‘virtual economic infiltrators’ were no less threatening to Nigeria, than the ‘on-the-run’ *BINANCE-NIGERIA*. And others of its ilk.
