By Muktar Tahir
Preparatory to the digital broadcast regime that the country is about entering come June 2017, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) recently organized a National summit on Broadcast Content and National Security, which took place in Lagos on the 26th of last Month.
The summit, which was presided over by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Muhammed who was represented by Mr. Emmanuel Agbegir, attracted broadcast station managers, content producers, veteran broadcasters and other broadcast stakeholders who brainstormed on how best to tailor-make our broadcast contents and streamline its processes so that national security is prioritized.
As such, people-oriented content generation took the centre-stage of the discussion of the over 300 participants.
At this juncture, the NBC and its leadership deserve commendation for summoning up such a courage to bring all the broadcast content developers, station managers and other stakeholders to come together and cross-fertilize ideas and chart a new course for the development of the broadcast industry and the nation as a whole, especially given the volatility that digitization is capable of making of our environment.
It was unanimously agreed that for every bad broadcast content, thousands of unimaginable havoc is wreaked on the society.
This was also identified by the Director General of the NBC, Mal. Ishaq Modibbo Kawu, in his welcome address during the summit, when he pointed out that the summit became necessary in view of the challenges posed by the insecurity in the country adding that broadcasting in general is not just about the technical realities of studios, transmitters or even the personnel; at its heart is content development.
In the DG’s word, “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. As I said, these are the extreme ends of the broadcast content debacle.”
In their discussions, the participants also believed that digitization has tremendous opportunities for new forms of content on new and existing platforms, but there also many anti-state forces trying to subvert the national security.
In that case broadcast stations were urged to step up their games to distinguish themselves by producing in-depth, patriotic contents capable of cementing the unity of the country, not copying from the social media which is regarded as a weaker source.
It has also been identified that many localities are not covered by Nigerian broadcast stations. As a result, there is over-dependence on foreign media content.
They added that Nigeria is being inundated with content from South African DSTV, Chinese Startimes and other Asian bouquets. So, station managers were advised to evolve programmes titles that are engaging and catchy, not sensational, and at least 60% of the content should be generated in-house. All content must involve research, this places research in content generation as important.
The experts also agreed that politics, religion and ethnicity are most unfortunately on the front burner in most of the Nigerians broadcast stations.
Hence the need to evolve content development that will involve higher quality processing of information for better acceptance by the people in a way that will lead to a more secured polity.
Attention was focused on the contribution of broadcasting to national development. As such, participants charged broadcast station managers to go beyond the development of content and routine reportage concerning security; it should educate people about how to improve their lives, rather than getting itself busy with commercials.
In that, the media should canvass matters that preach unity and oneness.
At the end, the summit visited the vision and goals of broadcast institutions and participants commended NBC for its regulatory role but urged it to formulate deliberate policies that will encourage funding of content, especially ones that are people, development oriented.
Tahir wrote from Abuja