President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the licenses of 67 new broadcast stations across the country. This will bring the total number of broadcast licences granted by his administration to 473.
The Director General of the National Broadcasting Commission, NBC, Malam Balarabe Shehu Ilelah made the announcement on Thursday in Abuja. He said the commission would soon commence issuing the licences.
He described the approval as a great milestone in furthering pluralism and freedom of expression.
Ilelah said that 47 of the newly licensed organisations were FM Radio stations, while five were community Radio and four were DTT Radio stations.
He said that presently, there were 740 functional broadcast stations in the country, and the list is expected to grow with further approval by the President.
Ilelah also disclosed that the President had approved for NBC to recruit more staff that will monitor broadcast stations in all parts of the country as well as acquire state-of-the-art nationwide broadcast monitoring equipment for the forthcoming election.
He added that in spite of the challenges with the implementation of the Digital Switch Over (DSO), the commission is determined to deliver to Nigerians life-changing digital broadcasting using Simulcrypt and working in collaboration with NTA Star Nigeria and ITS.
NBC also disclosed that 302 stations have been sanctioned for violating the 2023 election electioneering campaign which commenced four months ago.
The Director of NBC Broadcast Management, Mrs. Franca Ayitor, gave the breakdown of the number of the stations that were sanctioned.
She said the erring stations have two weeks to pay the fines failure of which will lead to graduation of fines.
According to Ayitor, 17 stations were fined while 196 stations were warned. She said 63 stations were cautioned while 93 stations were reprimanded. She added that 70 percent of stations had paid the fines.
Ayitor said the affected stations did not follow the guidelines for political programming content and quality which was prepared by the commission and shared to the stations.