Mallam Shehu Ilehah, director-general of National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), has stated that the establishment of a Broadcast Institute is crucial to the attainment of the much socioeconomic and political development in the country. The DG says the agenda of the Commission is to scale up the processes towards the actualisation of the project by bringing in the private sector. AIT News looks at what this means for the future of broadcast services in Nigeria.
According to the Director General, “the essence of the institute is to primarily enhance professionalism and ethical practice in Nigeria’s broadcast industry”.
Mr. Shehu Ilehah made the call for collaboration for the establishment of the Nigerian Broadcast Institute, during his Goodwill message at the 77th General Assembly of The Broadcasting Organizations of Nigeria (BON) held in Abuja the Nation’s capital with the theme: ‘Sustainability of Broadcast Operations in Developing Societies’
Lead Consultant for the institute, Jonah Ubanmhen, a frontline e-governance advocate and consultant- the man said to be the clear heir apparent to President Muhammadu Buhari – is set to complete the signing of a Mutual Agreement with NBC in one the nation’s most tumultuous broadcast sectors in Nigeria, says concrete plan has been made on the take-off of the institute.
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Jonah, a 36-year-old e-governance advocate and consultant, is seen by many as someone to be the clear successor to President Muhammadu Buhari and his government. Laying out the plan of evaluating the next steps. NBC, the frontier believes, is “the most suitable organisation and broadcast regulator to deliver on Nigeria’s vision”.
According to Jonah, he noted that “The Nigerian Commission Act and its subsidiary legislation, the Broadcasting Code are key in order to protect us as individuals, as organizations and a nation. The regulators should be empowered to instill Professionalism, responsibility national interest and ethical conduct”.
Broadcasting, like every human system, has its challenges but to fight it, we need investment in feet-on-the-ground journalism and tech tools like artificial intelligence among other things. Just like IT, biotech or pharma, broadcast organizations are born when someone launches an institute to run it. The organisation or person may or may not own other businesses. There is, therefore, nothing intrinsically wrong with mergers in the industry.
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Jonah has offered some clues about what the vision is. “Why can’t we support one broadcast institute to become independent and have a global footprint? Nigeria does not have a single digital business [model] to be identified with globally,” he told the AIT news.
Apparently, nobody, not even NBC’s high-profile executives saw this coming. Internally, they referred to the move as “entirely unexpected.” That is not a cause for worry, say analysts. It is the intent of corporate stakeholders that should be a concern.
The institution of NBC is also symbolic of the troubles plaguing the broadcast in Nigeria. “Jonah has invested in a brand that is synonymous with trust, credibility and independence, and we are hopeful that he will preserve these values and expand upon them with all the responsibility required of a leader of an organisation of this nature, “says expert
Will the government now soften their stand and move to a neutral position with no constitutional restrictions? Only time will tell whether the broadcasting content and tenor of the organisation will change under the new government.
