Halima Onotu I would be anonymous for safety reasons. Is there any problem mightier than not able to inform and be informed. No wonder the freedom of speech in Nigeria at global stats is at minimal. And what’s the cause of all this? The problem originated from the privatisation of the Information/communication industries of Nigeria.
Every country has national TV, wired publicly and maintained by the government(s) where citizens share their opinions and be heard, that’s the norm even before the advent of social media. In the case of Nigeria, the federal government sold the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), a free-on-air national TV to foreign TV channel firms, whose government maintained and controlled. How do one expects common countrymen/women be enlightened about what’s going on in Nigeria when majority of Nigerian citizens can’t afford the ever-increasing high cost of foreign TV. Critics think this was a governmental strategy to curb general awareness so the very rulling class could do and undo policies in their favor without the acknowledgement of general public. And that the government representatives wrongly assumed no way how citizens could detect or even complain when they knew nothing about what’s going on. A 70 + acquaintance of mine was complaining to me that since when he was disengaged from service in Unity bank during early 2000s in merging of commercial banks, with no pension nor entitlement to even eat or pay for rent with talk more of to paid-watch TV channel, that he relied on NTA free aired TV for entertainment and news for new job vacancies. But since when the Nigerian national TV was privatize and he had to subscribe to the increasingly cost TV premium to be able to watch the same quality entertainment and news which he’d been watching for free years prior, “I couldn’t pay. So i stopped watching” he concluded. This is one among millions of Nigerians whom government have deprived the right to inform and be informed But thanks to social media and forum sites like this one, we can now get information in no cost.
I know some of you still remember how the Nigerian communication, NITEL, was mismanaged and and sold to foreign telecommunication firms (MTN, Airtel, Glo, Etisalat..) was prior the fall of NTA. You may have wondered Why would Nigerian leaders sold nigerian information/telecommunication industries to foreign firms, what’s their gain?
Answer: Nigerian government sold both information/telecommunication industries to foreign firms which themselves are major investors. Technically, they converted national properties to personal property.
