The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has come under fire from the president of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Ayuba Wabba, for imposing sanctions on a number of particular radio and TV stations, claiming that doing so could lead to press emasculation.
Wabba claimed that the NLC learned of the license cancellations of 52 media outlets, including electronic television and radio companies, with shock.
He called the NBC’s explanations for why the affected media outlets didn’t pay for their license renewal “draconian.”
“While we understand that the NBC has a regulatory duty to ensure rules keeping, we believe that the action taken by the NBC is a little too drastic, dramatic, draconian, and debilitating not only for the affected media houses but also for their staff and indeed millions of Nigerians who follow programmes from the affected media houses.
“The first natural instinct to the withdrawal of the operating license by the NBC is the idea that the affected media houses did not deliberately avoid paying for their operating licences. Such would be akin to cutting so close to the bone.
“The most palpable reason for the failure of many of the media houses to pay for the renewal of their operating licences could be easily found in the deteriorating economic conditions in Nigeria.
“This is understandable given the severe stress and strain that businesses in Nigeria have been subjected to owing to fallout of the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, the ongoing disruption in global and domestic energy supply, the foreign exchange volatilities, and the associated hyper-inflation,” Wabba stated.
He pointed out that many media outlets, like the majority of businesses in Nigeria, face the dual threats of rising operating expenses and declining sales.
He claims that the government is largely to responsible for this sorry state of affairs because of its mishandling of the economy, which has caused the price of a litre of diesel to nearly reach N1,000.
The problem is made worse by the intermittent national grid collapse and the epileptic supply of electricity that has been occurring recently.
According to him, there are also salaries to be paid, maintenance services to be provided, and various other basic operating costs in addition to the skyrocketing and frighteningly rising energy costs, which hit electronic media houses hardest given that they must always be on air whether it makes economic sense or not.
He stated further, “Amidst these operational suffocations, how does the NBC expect the media houses to generate the money to renew their operating licences? Indeed, Nigeria’s media houses should be eulogised for resilience, and tenacity in the face of prevailing economic blizzards.
“The action of the NBC also smacks of insensitivity to the welfare of the staff of the media houses which operations are being shut down.
It is unthinkable that in the middle of very traumatic economic realities, government would be thinking of flinging many Nigerians into the unemployment market. Well, this is not new.
“A few days ago, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum made a case for the mass sack of Nigerians in government employment.
The unsolicited advice which had been robustly deflated by the NLC reveals a very embarrassing underbelly in the thinking of those commanding the reins of power in Nigeria today- crass insensitivity. This is very sad and unfortunate.
“In defence of the media, democratic and economic rights of Nigerians, we call on the NBC to rescind this decision to withdraw the operating licences of the affected 53 media houses.
In light of our foregoing concerns, we urge that the media operating licence be reviewed downwards as information dissemination is a social service.
“Albeit, we just received with some relief new reasoning by the NBC to allow the affected media houses to continue to operate. This is commendable.
Yet, our concerns conveyed in the foregoing subsist”.
Remember that in addition to the backlash that the NBC move has received, the Federal Government has been sued by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) and the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) to stop the action.
