Ahead of the 2019 general elections, the National Broadcasting Commission, NBC, has vowed to sanction some of the broadcast stations in the country for violating the nation’s broadcasting code in the course of their political broadcasts.
The Director General of the commission, Dr. Modibbo Kawu, issued the threat Wednesday while briefing the media on next month’s general elections and the Digital Switch Over, DSO, in Abuja.
Kawu, who said the commission had taken steps to forestall a repeat of the mistakes in 2015, said the commission had cautioned broadcast stations against breaching the extant code but expressed dismay that despite the warning, most of them had continued to violate the code in the course of their political broadcasts and avowed to wield the big stick on them in line with the law.
He specifically mentioned AIT, TVC, Channels Television and NTA as major culprits, while also listing Hot FM, Ray Power FM and Kiss FM as stations that had equally violated the code.
‘‘I have invited you to look at issues, especially related to the political situation, as we go into general elections. In Ekiti State, there were issues that led to the shutting down of the state broadcasting station.
”What happened was that in Osun State, maybe as a result of what happened in Ekiti State, there was much fairer coverage by the state broadcast station by allowing different political platforms to have very fair representation in their output.
‘‘We felt that justified the work we did. Starting from Anambra, we then moved to Ekiti, Osun states. With the commencement of the 2019 general electioneering campaigns, the national stations have become agog with sponsored rivalries by political parties, particularly the two main parties, the PDP and APC,” he told representatives of the television stations.
Kawu, who berated politicians that heat up the polity with the use of abusive words and hate speeches, said they have refused to learn from their past mistakes.
‘‘We have observed again through monitoring that politicians have refused to learn from the past, despite efforts by the commission to sensitize and remind them of their responsibilities, which came from the workshops we organized.
‘‘We monitor rivalries from the campaign of the parties and in recent times live coverage campaigns of these parties have been laced with indecent, abusive languages, name calling, use of hate speech.
”For instance, on January 10, at the presidential rally of the PDP broadcast by AIT, the national party accused INEC of rigging and threatened crisis if election is rigged in 2019.
‘‘At a live APC Governorship rally held on January 4 and aired on NTA, a stalwart of APC was quoted as saying ‘I will just continue to say the truth, one of the truths I will tell you is that they are telling Nigerians that Nigerians are hungry, indeed, if Nigerians are hungry, if these people left the money they stole, will Nigerians be hungry? Exactly, the $2billion dollars I know they stole, will Nigeria be hungry today?
‘‘We told our licensees that it is very good to make money this period but you will be liable if you allow your medium to be used to broadcast material that will be contrary to the code. Based on the foregoing, the four main stations, including AIT, TVC, Channels TV and NTA, were culpable in contravening the provisions of the broadcasting code in line with section 524 of the code,’’ he stated.
Speaking further, Kawu said: ‘‘The commission has been preparing for the elections in so many ways. The first thing we did as a result of what happened before, during and after the 2015 elections is to look at the way media, especially the broadcast media, covered the 2015 elections and issues of hate and dangerous speeches.
”We commissioned Nigerian Consultancy to look at that at it. The report was presented to NBC in 2017 and what we have done is we have gone round the country to validate that report.
‘‘We have presented the report at meetings in Kaduna, Kano, Enugu as well as Sokoto. Next week, we are going to Lagos to meet with broadcasters in South Western Nigerian. It offered us tremendous insight into the manner the media operate in our country and the things we need to do better.”
On regulatory intervention, he said NBC followed the regulatory procedure in the coverage of the previous elections held in the last few years and in line with sanctions enshrined in the Nigerian broadcasting code.
‘‘Following the Ekiti and Osun Governorship elections, the NBC directorate of broadcast monitoring undertook a two weeks special monitoring of programme on radio stations in Abuja from October 17 to November 2, 2018.
‘‘All broadcast stations were randomly monitored. Three stations were selected for special monitoring: Ray Power FM, Kiss FM and Hot FM. The following political programmes were monitored: Political Platform on Ray Power FM, Press talk and ‘Majaliser’ in Kiss FM and inside politics and Peoples Assembly in Hot FM.
‘‘At the end of the exercise, we discovered that the presenters had the tendency of presenting their own opinions; this was observed to be a matter of serious concern for all the stations monitored.
”Presenters were also observed to exhibit a biased mindset based on the comments they made during their programmes. This often leads to lack of fairness and balance in their programmes and this violates many sections of the broadcasting code.
‘‘There is poor handling of discussions, phone calls and text messages. Similarly, the presenters allowed hateful, inciting and derogatory comments to slip in without caution. There is also a lack of balance in the choice of panelist.
”Some stations were observed to often feature guests from a particular party perspective, almost on a regular basis. And there was tendency to do campaign before the approved time, contrary to the law. There was tremendous lack of knowledge and topic that the presenters tend to talk about.
‘‘We felt it is important we use these examples so that you can understand the basic issues we deal with in NBC. On a quarterly basis, we release report of monitoring stations in Nigeria. We are working on the last quarter of last year.
‘‘On a general basis, we discovered that our anchors tend to be unfair, unbound, biased in their reportage. There is still some significant amount of hate speech, even in the broadcast of the very big political parties; we noticed unverifiable claims, spurious statistics that can’t be verified. There has been a lot of abusive and inciting comments, no editorial intervention.
‘‘These are issues around political activities. We will continue to sensitize our licensees. That is why we are going to Lagos to deepen the sensitization, after which we are coming to Abuja to have INEC, NHRC, Broadcasters, CSOs, Police and observers where we are going to start with the report on 2015 general elections etc.’’
He further warned all broadcast station to be professional, especially on the day of election, saying that all political broadcast and jingles must stop 24 hours before election.
