The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Chairman Moddibo Kawu was around in Ilorin last week. The Ilorin born dude was in town for an inspection tour of the digital switch over station. Kawu disclosed that the commission has expended the sum of $26 million to procure 620,000 set-up boxes for Nigerian homes. The procurement is part of the efforts aimed at easing the digital switch-over of the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA). The commission’s Director-General, Alhaji Modibo Kawu spoke in Ilorin after inspecting the digital switch-over station of the Nigerian Television Authority. He also added that the commission decided to embark on the switch-over in phases due to its huge financial implications ’we are going to have it in phases because digital switch-over is a major challenge in terms of technology and logistics. The 620,000 boxes that we have procured for the first phase cost us $26m, that is a huge amount of money; considering that we have about 35 million homes in Nigeria. Each box is about $45 and if you multiply that by 35 million homes, it costs a fortune. We are going to have signal systems across the country. It is a very expensive process. Now, we are getting it done in six states one in each of the geo-political zones, Kwara in the North-Central, Osun (South-West), Gombe (North-East), Kaduna (North-West), Enugu (South-East) and Delta (South-South)’ he said. Are there implications attendant with the switch over? ‘When a country switches over to digital, it immediately changes the architecture of television in the country. We are moving from analogue form of watching television to a digital format. Let me give you a small example, when we switched over last year in Jos, hitherto, the city was watching between three and four television channels, they started watching 15 channels after the switch over. When we switched over in Abuja, we started giving them 30 channels. We calibrated them as local, regional and national stations. That immediately gives you a lot of options in terms of the number of television stations. Television is not a 24-hour affair in Nigeria and the interactive boxes being used could be used to post government information and they could also be used to do a lot of things that will help to deepen democratic process in the country. Definitely, we are going to have contents and we have decided that 75 percent of the contents of television in Nigeria would be locals’, he submitted. Kawu also stated that President Muhammadu Buhari had in his address at the United Nations General Assembly said one of the things his government would leverage on to create job opportunities is the digital revolution, what NBC has done therefore is trying to use the platform to get opportunities created for younger generations of Nigerian producers of local content to have control of the platforms . ‘There are so many multi-faceted dimensions to the opportunity that digital broadcasting will bring to Nigeria, the set-up boxes have been subsidized to cost a sum of N1,500 annually and they are renewable every year. But as we move forward, these boxes will no longer be subsidized. A subsidy regime can only be used at the pivot stage. As we move on, the sales would be market-driven. They are going to be in such a manner that Nigerians will be able to afford those boxes as they have a right to information’, he stated.
