By Muktar Tahir
Of recent, effort has been intensified to switch-over the country’s broadcast sector from analogue to digital terrestrial broadcasting technology, even though for a long, it had suffered from one political will or lack of it to another.
It could be recalled that June 2017 was finally set as the deadline for the complete degitisation of the entire country, the sacrosanctity of which the Presidency and the Minister of Information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed have always asserted.
More so, about seven months ago, the Jos pilot scheme of the Digital Switch-Over, has lent credence to this commitment, aside having perfected plans to flag off the Abuja phase of the project in this December, 22 to be precise.
With this in view, the agency saddled with the burden of migrating the country’s broadcasting to digital technology, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), has been up and doing to enable a seamless transition and success of this innovation in the Nigeria’s Broadcast Industry.
Undoubtedly, the new Director General of the commission, Ishaq Moddibo Kawu, since his assumption into office barely 6 months ago, has made it a point of duty to routinely meet with stakeholders in order to ascertain how far and how well the roll out has been moving.
So far, The DG has interfaced on several occasions with the set top box manufacturers, channel owners, the signal distributor as well as InView Technologies to ensure a hitch Free Abuja roll out.
In one of their meetings with the DG recently, these stakeholders, while confirming that 23 Channels are already running on the Set-Top-Box and also On-air test has been confirmed, pointed out that 15 distributors have been appointed to sell the boxes during the Abuja rollout.
In addition to that, the Commission, in partnership with Inview Nigeria LTD, recently organized one-day training on Electronic Programmed Guide (EPG) for all channel owners in FCT.
The training was aimed at equipping the personnel’s directly involved with daily scheduling, programming and EPG management for their stations.
It also exposed them on the collection, imputing and accuracy of all EPG metadata of programme, as well as building up the participants overall understanding of this important area of services to their channel and also to emphasize its importance to the overall DSO project.
I think that all these boil down to the quality leadership the Ministry and NBC is having. One instance that struck a chord in my minds was the Kawu’s commitment and leadership style he exhibited.
Immediately after his assumption 6 months ago, he hit the ground running with activities that is turning around the country’s broadcast sector and how he achieved a lot at this shortest period of time remains somewhat of a mystery. Indeed this man is a go-getter.
Categorically speaking, this man commenced the review of the Nigeria Broadcasting Code, which is hoped to be concluded early next year. He recently concluded a Content Financing Workshop in Lagos, Enugu and Kano, aside holding a national summit on Broadcasting Content and National Security. The DG also revealed his plans to organize a workshop on Hate Speech, which is unprecedented in Nigeria.
Most importantly, Kawu played a very instrumental role for Pinnacle Communications Limited to withdraw its case against NBC from court, without which the migration process would have been stalled and I would have doubt if June 2017 deadline would be realizable. The DG offered them an olive branch by magnanimously appointing them to be the signal carriers for Abuja and have installed a state-of-the-art transmission system.
By and large, my feeling is that if Abuja can go digital successfully by this December, then there is no icing on the cake that come June 2017, that is next year, the whole country’s broadcasting will swiftly navigate into the digital world. Our fingers are crossed!