For three weeks in November last
year till early December, I spent quality time on vacation in parts of the
United Kingdom with my longest stay in London. As part of my schedules, I took
time off my rest to interact meaningfully with some members of the ever growing
Nigerian community in London, the United Kingdom and an important aspect of
these interactive sessions done in very convivial and relaxed atmosphere was to
sound them out on their impressions regarding the publicly owned television
conglomerate – the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) which most of them
receive via satellite on a popular television station based in London – Ben
Television.
For background sake, Ben television
is a black and ethnic oriented urban, diverse and cosmopolitan family Channel,
established for the specific purpose of providing what the owner called a
wholesome mix of entertaining, educative and informational programmes suitable
for family viewing.
Ben Tv’s series of programmes also
include a range of cultural programming to empower, transform and challenge the
conventional perception of Africa, Caribbean and African – descendants in
Diaspora. The signature logo of the television station is “bridging the gap”.
Available information shows that a
major differentiation and what the owner considered as setting Ben tv apart
from other channels is its positive general black-oriented, youthful and
diverse cultural-educational programming format along with its enlightening
current affairs shows which serve to throw light on issues plaguing the
African-Carribeans and the African continent especially through its major
content scheduling in Nigeria. Ben Tv reaches about 10 million homes in the
United Kingdom and around the World where satellite and Digital reception are
accessible.
Available information also shows
that Ben tv Collaborates with Africa’s foremost private television station; the
largest Network in Africa, through their international feeds, which provides
Ben tv with new programmes for the Nigerian and African audiences.
Those spoken to in London on their
impressions of the performance and program contents of Nigeria’s and Africa’s
largest television Network-NTA, told me that what they enjoy most about the
Nigerian Television Authority is still the prime time network news at 9pm.
About one dozen persons spoken to were of the opinion that there is now a
fundamental shift of focus of the NTA from being the conservative mouthpiece of
government officials to extensively broadcasting developmental and human
interest stories that cover a broad spectrum of the ways and manners that
Nigerians make progress in the human global community.
Mr. Segun Martins; Miss. Edith
Obioma and Mr. Abdulkaren Suleiman who clearly expressed their delight at the
major shift of emphasis of the Nigerian Television Authority also were of the
opinion that the management that have presided over NTA in the last three years
have brought a lot of professionalism to bear in the operations of this
television station.
Alhaji Usman Magawata recently
retired as Director General of NTA after eventful tenure and handed over power
to the current Acting Director General Alhaji Musa Mayaki who pundits believe
has taken the NTA to greater heights following the beautiful achievements of
his predecessor in office.
Mr. Segun Martins stated thus; “I
have stayed in Britain for ten years now and I have monitored developments from
Nigeria on the Nigerian Television Authority and I can tell you that we are
proud of the new changes that we are witnessing now. With the passage of the
Freedom of Information Act in 2011 by the National Assembly and the
signing into law of the FOI Act of 2011 by President Jonathan, NTA has become the
proud voice of the people of Nigeria. Could you help us tell the management of
NTA to also educationally empower younger Nigerians who live abroad with series
of programmes in the indigenous Nigerian languages so that those Nigerian
languages that are facing threats of extinction are restored back to life.”
Most of those spoken
to however challenged NTA to further dedicate more time to
investigative stories on areas such as anti-corruption drives of the government
and other human interest stories such as social and organized crimes in parts
of Nigeria with a view to helping the law enforcement agencies tocombat these
crimes and make Nigeria investors' friendly.
These Nigerians abroad particularly
expressed worry that the Dana plane crash of Sunday June 3rd 2012 involving
flight 992 MC Donnel Douglas MD-83 aircraft was not professionally covered by
NTA even as some of them said such blunder should not happen again.
But in an interview published by a
Lagos-based news magazine, the current Director General of NTA Alhaji Musa
Mayaki offered cogent and verifiable reason why NTA did not cover the
unfortunate incident as much as Nigerians home and abroad would have loved.
His words; “Yes, as a matter of
fact, that particular incident of Dana plane crash was my saddest moment,
especially in terms of my duties. The reason is that we have equipment that we
can use to report live from anywhere. We call it TVU pack. When the crash
occurred, I called Lagos station to use the TVU pack to report it live because
we wanted to get live pictures of the incident. However, the station gave an
excuse that the TVU battery had not been charged. They had locked up the pack
in the store and so the battery was down. They said also that they did not buy
credit to recharge the pack. I asked them how much was the credit, and they
said it was N15,000. They told me that the major thing was that the battery had
packed up and that it would take almost the whole day to charge it so what they
did was to go and take still photographs”.
He further explained; “This should
have made our station different because we would be reporting every second, and
our viewers would be able to know what was happening. Nigerians would
have been able to know how the emergency rescue services were coping with the
situation and even how the hospitals were responding to the situation. Then
they would know that you were coming up with an innovation and every station
would tune up to you. Even when the pictures were sent at about 9 pm, it was
too dark for us to see”.
Mayaki continued; “The following
day, I was so infuriated over the disappointment that I insisted that somebody
must be punished for it. We have the pack all over the country, but not every
station had it. That is really where my regret came from. So if you say some
stations beat us to it, yes. If you say some stations had clearer pictures, I
will agree because it is indefensible really. But we have since put our house
in order. We are better prepared now”.
NTA which is a government owned
public broadcaster with a mandate to inform, entertain and educate the populace
has however undergone series of transformations. These innovations which were
introduced by the management is the reason for the new kind of optimism and
patriotism among most Nigerians abroad who still stay tune to the prime time
news porgramme at 9pm daily.
The realization by the management
that a multi channel environment requires automation to be effective and
efficient, it immediately installed a suite of broadcast automation software
and hardware known as wonder cube.
Specifically, wonder cube is a suite
of soft ware applications meant to computerize and automate various aspects of
the television broadcasting chain.
The NTA wonder cube system consist
of; a six channel automatic play out system; newsroom computer system; a media
asset management and archiving system; a compliance recording system and an
ingest system. NTA is also preparing the framework for the eventual switch
over/migrate to the digital broadcasting system by 2015.
The totality of my interactions with
about one dozen Nigerians in the United Kingdom is that they are positively
expecting the current management at the Nigerian Television Authority to
achieve its long term plan which is to deliver television to the populace
through terrestrial, mobile and IPTV platforms and offer a wide variety of
choice of local programmes.
* Emmanuel Onwubiko; HEAD, HUMAN
RIGHTS WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA and blogs@www.huriwa.blogspot.com.
7/01/2013
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