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| Government says Viewers to start paying access fees for NTA |
The Federal Government on Saturday said that it is introducing content access fees to replace radio licence fees ahead of Nigeria’s migration to digital terrestrial television
broadcasting by 2015.
The Minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku, made this known at the opening of the Extra Ordinary meeting of the National Council of Information in Abuja.
He said:
“For a long time radio licences have not been collected and in other countries the public broadcast services are run from fees collected on broadcast content.
“But unfortunately in our country, the existing constitutional
provision has made fee collection less effective.
“Now, we are undertaking a new format. We are taking advantage of the digital technology and looking beyond sending people to go from place to place to collect fees for broadcast content.
According to him, under this new regime, for anyone to have access to television content on NTA Nigeria,you have to pay an annual content access fee which is set to be operational.
The minister outlined some of the advantages of the new broadcast content fee collection regime to include, improved financial capability for stakeholders to improve content and upgrade infrastructure.
He said this would help the Nigeria Broadcasting Commission and other stakeholders have access to adequate funds for sustained upgrade of their infrastructure for effective service delivery.
The minister added that Nigeria was at crossroads to either transit smoothly or risk being cut-off from the rest of the world by June 2015 when the global migration deadline takes effect.
Hmmm...well like he said,it happens in other countries but those other countries have accesibility.You can see where all the money goes and you can see quality programs as well as quality pictures.I can bet you we will see neither of all these things i mentioned on NTA once we start paying this access fees.The NTA set up is embarrassing.The programs lack content,the quality of the pics are years behind and you have to go to NTA itself to see how poorly run it is.I have been to the NTA in Victoria Island several times and it is very poor.The toilets for example are in terrible state.Because i was a guest who they held in esteem,i was referred to one of the program controllers toilet.And even that was just a pass mark.Imagine a whole NTA,National Television and the toilets are as bad as public toilets.
So with all these in mind ,i just think to myself ,this access fees money is just another idea to chop allocated money.
But the most significant thing about this whole venture is,this might be the end of NTA,because already,people struggle to watch NTA.Maybe at best some people watch the news.There are far too many Channels in Nigeria and on cable TV for Nigerians to pay for NTA use in Nigeria.This could be the end of NTA.