By Agi Onda
Abuja
A Corporate Affairs Manager of Progressive Solidarity Forum (PSF), Abuja, Mr. Muhammed Mubarak, has described the ongoing blackmail against the equipment used for the digital switch over (DSO) project as the handiwork of disgruntled elements, who failed to secure the bidding right of the multi-million naira federal government project, saying he will fail against the grain of reality.
In a press statement, Mubarak said PSF was surprised to read “through the two part submissions made by one Mr. Tony Dara, in a national daily, wherein he painted a wrong picture of the equipment used in the execution of the DSO project, describing them as obsolete and out of use”.
He explained that the Integrated Television Services (ITS), which Dara referred to in his submissions “is a sister company, unbundled from the Nigeria television Authority (NTA) , which mandate included the inheritance of transmission components and facilities of NTA, taking into consideration governments huge investment over the years in this institution.”
“The digitization policy was put together by a hybrid of key government agencies such as the National Broadcasting Corporation, which is the regulator, Ministries of Finance and Information, representatives of broadcast institutions and some eminent Nigerians on the Presidential Advisory Committee for the switch over from analogue to digital broadcasting in the country, with a terminal date in June this year,’ he said.
He noted that, rather than acknowledge the effort of officials involved with the project, Dara went for their jugular, dismissing them as incompetent and people who, in his warped view, are only out to short-change the system for mere pecuniary benefits.
“He overreached himself by quoting extensively, information that he obtained from websites of companies that manufactured what he described as ‘discontinued’, ‘obsolete’ equipment which he claimed was deployed both for the pilot project in Jos and Ilorin sites to advance his position. But he failed to educate us on best practices in such situations by original equipment manufacturers.
Mubarak described the digital broadcasting as a win-win proposition, noting that “it was and had never been a ‘winner takes all’ thing.”