NBC Board, Management bicker over controversial broadcasting code

• NBC Board calls for review of code
• IBAM seeks new round of stakeholder consultation
• NBC Management declines review of code

  The controversial sixth edition of the Nigerian Broadcasting Code that stakeholders in the industry have kicked against has equally drawn the irk of the board of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) who has insisted the code must be reviewed, while management also declined  such suggestion.

The board had recently placed advertisements in some national newspapers calling on aggrieved stakeholders in the broadcasting and entertainment industries to submit position papers on the amended code.

But the NBC, in another advert signed by its acting Director-General, had also asked Nigerians to disregard the earlier one put out by the board.

However, Chairman, NBC board, Ikra Aliyu Bilbis, told journalists in Abuja that it was wrong for the NBC’s top management staff to say the advert placed by the board had no official endorsement of the commission.

Bilbis, who asserted that some ministry officials were setting the NBC’s top management staff against the commission’s board, added protocols were being breached by the officials in their oversight of the broadcast regulatory agency.

He explained as much the board agreed that Section 6 of the NBC Act conferred on the minister the power to give directives of a general character to the commission, the Act “however does not infer that the honourable minister can substitute the board by usurping the functions of the same board.”

Bilbis noted that there had never been a time in the history, tradition and conventions of the NBC when a presidential approval was needed for a review of the broadcasting code and wondered why top management of NBC would choose not to listen to stakeholders who were shut out during the amendment.

In a related development, the Independent Broadcasters Association of Nigeria (IBAN) has also asked the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to suspend the implementation of the amended 6th broadcasting code.

The association’s secretary, Guy Murray-Bruce, in a statement, said the amendment should be subjected to a new round of wide stakeholder consultation to avoid a legal crisis.

Murray-Bruce said the committee in charge of the amendment did not circulate a draft of its work to stakeholder groups before its ratification.

“We at The Independent Broadcasters Association of Nigeria (IBAN) wish to make a few observations which will touch on issues of stakeholder consultations, the committee’s terms of reference vis a vis its outcome and the practicality of the amendments as enunciated.

“First of all as a vital organ of the broadcasting value chain we feel that we deserved a seat on the committee. Granted that IBAN is a part of BON, we still needed to be represented on the committee in our capacity as private sector investors in broadcasting.

“We believe that the fact that as a body the committee didn’t deem it fit to avail us with a draft of its findings before formalizing its ratification with Mr. President’s approval is somewhat demeaning. We also find that the presumably inadvertent timing of the release of the amendments in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic fears may have hampered our ability as a group to internally consult and express our views.

“We strongly feel that a draft of the committee’s work ought to have been circulated to stakeholder groups before its ratification. On the issue of the committee’s terms of reference, we find that the amendments do not reflect the core issues highlighted by the minister in his terms of reference which in the main centered on licensing of Web TV, recruitment of monitoring staff and allied issues.

“We all the same have reservations as to the practicality of implementing the amendments in their present form. We have observed what we believe could be areas of possible conflict with other government agencies due to overlapping mandates. We most humbly submit that the NBC hold off on the implementation of the amendments at this time. Indeed we recommend that a new round of wide stakeholder consultation be embarked upon,” IBAN scribe said.

In his reaction, Acting Director-General, NBC, Prof. Amstrong Idachaba, stated that the commission “carried all the stakeholders along during the amendment’’.

Idachaba, however, alleged that a stakeholder, who is a foreign company, was behind the campaign against the amended code.

The Ag. DG NBC said the foreign company was kicking against the code because it erroneously believed that it would weaken its monopoly and brought Nigerian companies up to the same level as it.

“This is not so. Rather it would even give them more reach and more money”, he added.