IN celebrating the first World Radio Day, a coalition of civil society organisations, has said that to maximise the potentials in radio as a voice for the people and an instrument for social, economic and political development, urgent steps should be taken to free radio broadcasting in Nigeria from the grip of government control.Also speaking on the essence of day, the Managing Director of City FM, Mr. Kevin Ejiofor, said that while it is good to come up with days to mark issues in the society, the themes are usually slogans, and often times, only little efforts are made to domesticate them in their true meanings and apply the theme in the context of the countries that are celebrating.'The UNESCO said government and other stakeholders should make sure that they celebrate the day acknowledging the power of radio as a means for cohesion and information sharing. But you know that in Nigeria today, and even us, professionals, are to blame in the real sense. We do not promote radio really for its own value; we contextualize radio into some business. The real value of radio by which it provides opportunities for people to exchange information and the community to talk within itself is not real in Nigeria', the former FRCN Director-General said.The group, which called for the transformation of publicly owned radio stations into public service radios, said urgent steps should be taken by Federal and State governments to review the laws establishing radio stations to guarantee their editorial independence and remove them from the control of partisan political interests and authorities.'Measures should be taken to ensure that the stations are managed by independent Boards whose members have no political affiliations, and have security of tenure. Funding arrangements for the stations should also be such as to insulate them from manipulation or control by political or other sectional interests.'In the communiqu jointly signed by Akin Akingbulu for Nigeria Community Radio Coalition (NCRC), Lere Oyeniyi for Institute for Media and Society (IMS), Edetaen Ojo for Media Rights Agenda (MRA) and Lanre Arogundade for International Press Centre (IPC), the alliance demanded that the directive of President Goodluck Jonathan regarding the licensing of community radios, given 15 months ago, should be obeyed, while calling the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) to adhere to the timeframe by issuing the initial set of community radio licenses not later than the second quarter of 2012.The body faulted the suggestion made in the report of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Transition from Analogue to Digital Broadcasting proposing, what the coalition claimed as 'governmental control of broadcasting signal distribution.''We call on the Federal Government to reject these proposals as they represent a blatant return of radio and television broadcasting to government monopoly as broadcasting signal distribution would be under the firm control of the Federal Government, which would amount to a reversal of the gains of the liberalisation of the broadcast sector in the last two decades', it stated.Specially, the group insisted that the content of the report should be subjected to public scrutiny to enable stakeholders and other interested members of the public make their inputs before any final decision is taken on any of the issues.City FM boss however argued that in Nigeria, 'Radio is used for music and tutelage, so that it can appeal to the advertisers for adverts placement. The value of radio as a developmental tool, a tool for cohesion within society, the social forces within the country do not allow for that.'And the community radio NBC has been promoting, cannot practically take off because the concept is submerged in revenue gathering and commercial use.'On the way forward, the former director of FRCN, said there should be paradigm shift, the orientation of the people and the professionals ensuring that radio is used for what is meant for more effectively.'It will be difficult to say that this should be the way forward, we are copying from America, Britain and advanced countries, where the economy the supports and feeds the commercial needs of radio without any special efforts, therefore the people can demand of radio the things that are useful for them. But with the economy in the kind of state we live in, the appeal of radio would have been for its cheapness and reach, but the structure of our society does not have room for consideration of the needs of those who wants things cheaply.
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