NBC creates digital access fund from annual TV licence fees

Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, director general of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), has said his agency will create a Digital Access Fund where N1000 annual TV licence fee paid by each TV owners will be deposited.

Kawu, who made this known recently at the official launch of the Digital Switch Over (DSO) in Abuja, said the fund would be used to help content developers in the industry.

The DSO, according to him, would help deepen the democratic process in Nigeria and access to freedom of information and feedback.

The DG said that the agency would engage the Nigerian Governors Forum in the next phase of the digitization process, stressing that after Abuja, the next port of call of the DSO would be one state each in the six geopolitical zones.

He said over one million direct and indirect jobs would be created after Nigeria completed its DSO in June 2017.

With the Abuja DSO, analogue TV owners who have not purchased the Set-Top-Boxes will still be able to watch TV till June 2017 when analogue broadcasting would be switched off in the country.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who officially launched the DSO in Abuja, said Nigeria now stood at the threshold of massive job creation with the launching.

Buhari, who was represented by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, said the digitalization of the country’s broadcasting industry couldn’t have come at a better time when the country’s economy needed a lifeline.