By Danlami Nmodu
As the tempo of political activities towards 2015 rises, a group, Friends of Free Media,FFM has accused the National Broadcasting Commission ,NBC and other regulatory bodies of deliberate suppression of northern media .FFM in a press release on Wednesday said “It has come to glare that some regulatory bodies are being manipulated to suppress media freedom particularly in the North,contrary to several constitutional and human rights provisions which ought to safeguard against these undemocratic and primitive attacks by the regulatory agencies against the media(particularly in the North ),as the country heads toward the 2015 general elections”.
“The pressure being mounted on Northern media includes the trumping up of episodic, unpredictable and very often arbitrary and superfluous charges based on unqualified accusations that result to imposition of sanctions with unjustified penalties and exorbitant fines by the commission on Northern media which is mostly Radio.”
The group listed NBC’s draconian measures through to include rules “that stations must give at least 48 hours’ notice in writing before airing a live political programme -a near impossibility given the impromptu nature of such coverage”
“That only current political office holders may be allowed to declare their ‘democratic dividends’,while all others must await the official campaign flag off.
“That any programme which hosts an opposition party figure(sponsored or not) must invite and host a guest from the ruling party(if willing to pay or not/by carrot or by stick)..
“That the media must exercise restraint in reporting the army’s fight against insurgency even though there are known pressmen in Sambisa and it’s the army that has formed a habit of making summersault statements”
Also FFM insisted “that even the so-called Broadcasting Code of the NBC (used in gagging the Nigerian media ) is an illegal document which has not been passed into law by the National Assembly and thus also violates certain provisions of the Nigerian Constitution”
FFM said further “These abracadabra fines are based on absurdities(such ) as ‘,uncorroborated statements’,discourteous reference to an office holder’, (and )even though the highest officer in the land has publicly made ‘uncorroborated statements’that were obviously making ‘discourteous reference to a state office holder’(over the air)and no one was sanctioned!”
The statement by FFM’s National Chairman,Sir Jalal Falal also alleged that the composition of NBC is lopsided. “the composition of the NBC negates the principles of Federal character and further underlines the intense pressures applied on the Northern media by those who hold sway at the National Broadcasting Commission ,from the seat of the chairman of its Board,to its DG and his cardinal officers.The NBC (as today constituted ) is an ethnically lopsided illegality bent on stunting the growth of Northern Media”.
It could be recalled that copies of Daily Trust and Leadership newspapers ,among others were confiscated by security agents recently for several days.But the military said it acted based on intelligence reports.
