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Aidoghie Paulinus, Abuja
Media Rights Agenda (MRA) and International Press Centre (IPC), yesterday, described the fines imposed on three television stations in Nigeria by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) as a violation of the constitution and basic principles of fair hearing and vowed the sanction cannot stand.
In a letter dated October 23, signed by its acting Director General, Prof. Armstrong Idachaba, the NBC had fined Channels Television, Africa Independent Television (AIT) and ARISE Television N3 million each as penalty for alleged use of unsubstantiated footages from social media in their coverage of #EndSARS protests and gave them three weeks from the date of receipt of the letter to pay the amount to avoid further sanctions.
But in a joint statement, yesterday, MRA and IPC accused the NBC of turning itself into a “kangaroo court” and demanded an immediately reversal of the decision to save the NBC and country from embarrassment locally and internationally as a result of the action.
MRA’s Executive Director, Mr. Edetaen Ojo, said: “A situation where the NBC, which is so glaringly lacking in independence and subject to the direct control of political authorities, wrote the Nigeria Broadcasting Code creating the offences for which the stations were sanctioned and was the complainant in the allegations against the stations, prosecuted them and sat in judgment on the matter without even giving the stations any opportunity to defend themselves against the charges while also imposing a fine of N3 million on each of them, which it intends to collect and pocket, is offensive to any notion of fair hearing, equity or justice.
“Every Nigerian ought to be scandalised by this obscene violation of a principle that is sacrosanct not only under our Constitution, but under every regional and international human rights instrument to which Nigeria is a state party. It portrays Nigeria as crude and primitive and will no doubt bring the country to ridicule.”
Mr. Lanre Arogundade, executive director of IPC, spoke in the same vein.
“The NBC has in this matter again constituted itself into the accuser, prosecutor and judge in its own case. It is indeed strange that the fines were arbitrarily imposed without giving the concerned media outlets the option of defending the allegations. All this constitutes an affront on rule of law.”
Mr. Arogundade said IPC would team up with MRA to use the instrumentality of the law to challenge the absurdities perpetrated by NBC.
Meanwhile, Concerned Nigerians, human rights and pro-democracy group, led by Deji Adeyanju, has threatened to write the United States, United Kingdom and European Union to place a visa ban on Idachaba and his immediate family if the sanction is not reverse.
In a letter dated October 28, and addressed to Idachaba, the group said: “Your draconian warning to these media platforms and subsequent sanctions for carrying out their constitutionally guaranteed freedom to avail citizens real facts about the human rights violations by the security agents and insight into the trend of social development in the country is anti-democratic and must stop with.
