By BEN EGBUNA
More than 50 years after Nigeria’s independence, the attitude of self-denigration – we are not ready for this, we are not ripe for that -has remained with us, which is partly why development has been embarrassingly sluggish. Nigeria has been lethargic in adopting global technological, social, economic and other development models that are driving growth and development elsewhere, with our government officials always advancing self-defeating excuses – usually security concerns -for inaction.
Recall that many years after the world embraced the Global System of Mobile communication (GSM) telephony, Nigeria was reluctant to join the technological shift, preferring the analogue telephone system which was evidently not working but which was nevertheless a status symbol in the country. There was, even as at 2000, just about 450,000 lines in the country of over one hundred million people, and many of these lines were non-functional. The official argument, stated by the then minister of communications, against Nigeria joining the league of GSM technology countries was that the telephone was not a toy for Tom, Dick and Harry, meaning that it was a security risk to provide easy telephone access for the people.
The GSM was eventually introduced in Nigeria in 2001 making the country one of the last states in Africa to embrace the digital mobile telephone system. Mobile telephony has since transformed the social and economic sectors in Nigeria, revolutionising inter-personal communication and contributing tremendously to economic growth. Telecommunication has since 2001 assumed the status of fastest growing sector of the Nigerian economy.
Similar self-defeating justifications for non-performance also accounted for Nigeria being among the last countries to embrace media pluralism in the broadcast sector. In this instance it was again contended that Nigeria was note ripe for private participation in broadcasting; that private radio and television stations would endanger the security health of the country.
However, in 1992 government summoned the courage to take the bold and necessary step that has positively transformed the broadcast industry in Nigeria. Today there are no less than 350 television and radio stations in the country and the country’s security has in no way been breached or threatened as a result of their existence nearly two decades after. Abubakar Jijiwa, Chairman Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria and Director-General of Voice of Nigeria says of broadcast deregulation: “it is clear it has strengthened democracy.”
Whatever security challenges the country has experienced before and after the emergence of private broadcasters have been mostly politics related. In fact, it is argued in some quarters that the existence of private radio and television stations has to some extent been a constraining factor for coup plotters.
Despite the liberalisation of broadcasting, interested groups in the country have for more than a decade now been asking for approval of licences for community radio but government has remained unconvinced about the nation’s capacity to operate community broadcasting without creating security complications regardless of its acknowledgement of the potential role community broadcasting can play in national development and in spite of the report of the Advisory Committee that was submitted to government in 2006.
In fact, sometime in March 2007, a memo by the Minister of Information for community broadcasting was rejected by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) because it was feared that the National Broadcasting Commission, charged with broadcast regulation, might not be able to effectively supervise the operation of community radio stations in the country. Nigeria was not ready for community broadcasting!
Of course this conclusion by the FEC did not take into consideration the fact that the NBC, which says it recognises community radio “as a key agent of democratisation for social, cultural and economic development,” had since 2006 fashioned a regulatory framework for community broadcasting. In Chapter Nine of the fourth edition of the Nigeria Broadcasting Code, (2006) the NBC had specified the guidelines for the funding and operation, suitability of application as well as the language of broadcast on community radio stations.
The Nigeria Broadcasting Code provides that “A community broadcasting service shall be owned and controlled by the community through a trusteeship or a foundation with a board of trustee.” And a community, according to the Code, “shall be a group of people residing in a particular geographical location or sharing a strong interest which the community desires to develop through broadcasting,” such as local, not-for-profit organisation, educational institution, cultural association, co-operative society and partnership of associations. The Code makes it clear that licence will not be granted to religious organisations, political parties, individuals and corporate bodies other than not-for-profit organisations.
Yomi Bolarinwa had told Digicast that “The power of the transmitter of a community station only allows less than one kilometre radius coverage. It means that in a place like Abuja, one particular frequency can be replicated among four, five, six communities without interference. We need to work seriously on that before we go so we don’t make the kind of mistakes some other countries made. But the important thing is that whenever we start it, no individual will take a community licence; each community will have a board of trustees that is registered at the Corporate Affairs Commission. And that BOT must be representative of all the groups within that community. There must be regular quarterly meetings to determine programmes that go on air in the station. It is not the job of one person. There must be a committee that will do that and which will be actively supervised by NBC. That’s the only way.”
The guidelines and regulatory framework already put in place by the NBC for the operation of community radio appear, however, not convincing enough for government to approve the operation of this third tier of broadcasting in the country. But the Nigerian Community Radio Coalition is not giving up yet on its demand for approval of licences for community radio. Riding on the back of the African Charter on Broadcasting, which advocates a clear recognition of the difference between decentralised public broadcasting and community broadcasting, the coalition is mounting increased pressure on government to uphold the cardinal principle of the African Charter, nine years after it was adopted in Namibia. In June 2010 the coalition held a one-day policy dialogue on Community Radio Development in Abuja at which participants discussed the state, environment and development of community radio in Nigeria with a view to accelerating the process of licensing and developing community radio in the country.
Minister of Information and Communications, Labaran Maku, addressing the opening of the policy dialogue, assured the gathering that community radio would soon become a reality in the country. “Already in Nigeria,” he said, “the number of applications for private radio licenses that we have received through the National Broadcasting Commission is an indication that in the next few years, we can’t stop the development of community radio stations.”
Maku observed that developments in the information technology sector across the world had made national security a very lame argument against community radio “because information technology in the world has reached a level where you can’t prevent your citizens from accessing information globally. ...So it is better we offer them their own means of communication. In that way, it will be much more possible to have the national security we are talking about.”
BON Chairman, Jijiwa, says going by the contributions deregulation has made towards strengthening democracy in Nigeria, the use of national security as an argument to stall the operation of community radio in Nigeria is untenable, and cautions against giving in to a non-existent fear. “I am not happy,” he says “that community broadcasting is not in operation in Nigeria. In countries like Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Uganda and Cameroon, community radio is ubiquitous. Those countries have not burnt to ashes. Why are we afraid? Let’s not succumb to fear of the unknown. With regulations and strict enforcement, we can deal with these fears rather than allow them to stall development.” True, a faint heart never won a fair lady.
The broadcast regulator, however, believes there are very good reasons to thread softly. “We have seen state radio stations go at each other when their states have differences,” Bolarinwa submits. “We have seen communities go to war in this country. When people say it is only in Nigeria that there is no community radio, they forget how many communities there are in, say Ghana; how big are the communities there? They forget our recent past; we know what we went through during the Bakassi crisis between two state stations. We have seen conflicts between communities and you can well imagine what would have happened if they had community radio stations not properly structured. We will get there but people should allow a firm, well structured organisation and set of rules on ground before we go into it.”
Indeed, Nigeria is the only country in West Africa that is yet to operate community radio. And it is this softly-softly approach being recommended by the NBC that perhaps informed the decision by the regulator to grant a licence in 2002 to the University of Lagos to operate Campus radio. 
It was generally believed that the campus radio was to serve as a test run for community radio in the country. Unilag FM, until 2007 remained the only campus radio; now there have been at least 24 other campus radio licences granted since then.
The NBC regards campus radio stations as community broadcasting. This will be hard to dispute going by the definition of community in the broadcasting code. And so from the stand point of the NBC, community broadcasting is already operational in Nigeria through Campus Radio. If UNILAG FM was licensed, as was initially thought, to test-run community radio in the country, it will be logical to conclude that by approving as many as 24 additional campus radio licences, government was satisfied with the UNILAG experiment.
Obviously it is still not convinced about the maturity and competence of the other communities identified in the Nigeria Broadcasting Code to operate community radio stations. But the approval of campus radio has not satisfied the yearnings of campus radio agitators. Maku’s statement to the Nigerian Community Radio Coalition that “the Federal Ministry of Information and Communications under the present leadership is a convert and we will continue to support this cause until we have our own community radio,” has not provided solace either.
The coalition has welcomed the “born again” rhetoric of the ministry of information, which is not new considering that during the Obasanjo Administration, the ministry presented a memo for approval of community radio to the FEC but it fell through. The coalition is asking for action. They want community radio stations to start operating in the country asap because, as the saying goes, hope deferred makes the heart sick. In the communiqué on the dialogue in Abuja, they urged the President “to delegate powers to the National Broadcasting Commission to issue community radio licences,” and the NBC “to step up its efforts to actualise community radio stations” in view of the urgency to actualise community radio stations in Nigeria. Perhaps the way to bring this about will be to grant a few licences, say one in each of the six geo-political zones of the country, on experimental basis
It is obvious, however, that for this to happen, government will first have to purge itself of its obsessive concern for security, its curious perception of Nigeria as extra delicate and fragile, and its people as volatile and incapable of engaging in the simplest of ventures without putting the country on the boil, even when experience in the past five decades disproves this.
And need we remind the government that action is the proper fruit of knowledge.
Ben Egbuna Is the Publisher/Editor in Chief of Digicast Magazine
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