Coming Of Community Radio Stations

The world over, the media both electronics and print are charged with the onus of public education, information and entertainment. To this effect the media are known and ever addressed as the fouth estate of the realm yet the fulfillment of such dream is not realized particularly in the developing countries.

But one thing is clear, the dissemination of information especially government activities to the public has become crucial part of media duties which are sometimes difficult to perform mainly due to language barrier, poor communication system coupled with lack of modern equipment. Frankly speaking the grassroots are most neglected when we talk of non-availability of information on government activities. In the actual sense, information should be a-two-way traffic, coming from government to grassroots and visavis from grassroots to government.

Being aware of the need to bridge this gap, the federal government led by President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan empowered the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to approve licences for the establishment of Community Radio Stations without recourse to the Presidency. The President who spoke through his Vice, Alhaji Namadi Sambo while declaring open the 8th bi-annual conference of Africa Broadcasters at Abuja maintained that the Federal Executive Council has already considered the approved guidelines for the proposal by the NBC for the licence of Community Radio Stations in the country.

Consequently, it is believed that this singular directive has gone a long way to clear the bottlenecks associated with government policies in the past which were hardly fulfilled. The yawnings of the grassroots who had been denied both assess to information and the use of native languages in their respective domains will  become the thing of the past as soon as the stations come on stage.

This, to a large extent would buttress democracy in the country because democracy in its entirety makes for freedom of information and one meaningful area to achieve this, aim and objective is by allowing the respective communities to have information through the use of their native languages for effective communication.

The Tide commends President Jonathan and welcomes the idea with keen interest and believes that the establishment of community radio stations in the grassroot will facilitate the programmes and policies of government at the various levels. No doubt it will also signal the awareness of people to the programmes of government at the grassroots, we believe, this is coming at the right time as the nation progresses  for the 2011 general elections mainly because our votes must count this time.

We also hope that time was over due for the country to have more community radio stations because even in the neighbouring country such as Benin Republic there are about 37 community radio stations yet Nigeria that claims the giant of Africa has not got up to that number if at all she has any.

The Tide is further delighted that the establishment of community radio stations will bring genuine investors to the rural areas because communication will be enhanced at the grassroots. However we pervently pray that the political class will not hijack this lofty project to enable the rural dwellers express their views freely. To this end, we urge the NBC to properly scrutinize and ensure that all those who apply to own a station are screened. By so ding the process of owning station would not be abused.

We are also sure that this project will create employment opportunities and serve as poverty alleviation in the rural areas. Again, proper guidelines should be spelt out by the NBC, authorities so that the radio stations could maintain good standards.

More importantly, government should roll out measures to control the operation of the proposed stations. We are as well asking that any station that violates the guidelines should be deregistered. This is one of the ways that the goal behind the proposed community radio stations could be achieved.

We recall that at the Information Summit, 1st – 3rd September, 2010 organised by the Rivers State Ministry of Information in Hotel Presidential, Port Harcourt some papers presented had called for establishment of community radio stations among others as a necessary way of enhancing democracy in the country.

Nonetheless we believe that the message has arrived.

The Tide therefore advise that no community should use the station to breed discord against her neighbour as such would be counter-productive. Welcome community Radio Stations in Nigeria.