IPOB Leader’s interview: NBC Sanctions Channels TV

For daring to interview the spokesman of the Independent People of Biafra (IPOD), one of Nigerian news television station, Channels TV may have ran into trouble waters of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) which is threatening to sanction it.

For a start, the regulating authority of broadcast stations, the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) is threatening to suspend the broadcast licence of Channels Television in addition to slamming it with a fine of Five Million Naira.

The interview programme with the title; “Politics Today” being anchored by Seun Okinbaloye on Sunday night, based on the NBC strongly-worded letter to the management of Channels Television, was in contravention of several of the broadcast codes and extant laws of the country.

The NBC letter states in part; “In the programme, a so called new leader of IPOB made several secessionist and inciting declarations on air without caution or reprimand by your station.

“He also made derogatory, false and misleading statements about the Nigerian Army. This is reprehensible especially that IPOB remains a proscribed organisation as pronounced by the law courts of the land. This much Channels ought to know and respect.”

The NBC letter which was signed by its Acting Director General, Prof Armstrong Idachaba cited sections 3.11.1(b) and 5.4.3 of the Nigerian Broadcasting Code as having been violated, stressing that Channels TV is therefore liable to the suspension of its licence and a fine of N5millon provided in Section 15 of the code for its infractions.

Idachaba directed an immediate cessation of the programme just as he warned that Channels Television owes the country the responsibility for a true professional and ethically guided Broadcasting especially at times of crisis.

However, Forefront News gathered that the Code that Prof Idachaba is referring to and which he is using to sanction Channels Television remains in contention as the Board of Directors of the NBC rejected it on the premise that it did not follow laid down procedure and processes of amendment of the NBC Code but more of a fiat through the directive of the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed.