The National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) said it is set to tackle broadcast lingering insecurity threatening the unity of the country as it is putting plans in motions for seamless Digital Switch-over (DSO) transition from analogue to digital broadcasting by June 2017.
Director General of NBC, Is’Haq Modibbo Kawu, who made this known in his welcome address at the 2016 national summit on broadcast content and national security held in Lagos last week, said NBC must be at the cutting edge of developments in the challenging world of 21st century broadcasting.
He said the challenge is no longer far away from the broadcast regulator, especially with the hope that it has to complete the Digital Switch Over by June, 2017. “We will immediately confront newer challenges that will task our abilities as an institution.
“There are anti-state forces willing to take advantage of the openings becoming increasingly available to all of us, to subvert national security. Can broadcast content become an avenue to subvert national security? The possibilities are real, especially with what we have seen of secessionist groups in some parts of the country.
“They have set up radio stations broadcasting inciting and subversive content. There is also the terrorism of Boko Haram, and its recent efforts to even launch a radio station on the border between Nigeria and Cameroun, as reported in the past month, in the media. These groups are using the internet to post chauvinistic, unpatriotic and often subversive, content.
“They are contesting the spaces of our national history and seeking to win the minds of the young, with narratives and discourses that challenge our nationhood and wellbeing. We realise the historic importance of the new phase that we would be entering with the 2017 DSO, its exciting possibilities and the dangers that might be lurking in the process for national security” he said.
Kawu said digital broadcasting will open tremendous opportunities for newer forms of content that will be available on so many new and existing channels. The jobs that will follow the digital revolution will impact on the nation’s GDP and redound to the benefit of our country, and they will have far-reaching impact on communities in rural and urban Nigeria he added.
