NBC’s controversial memo and increasing bullying of the media
The Punch
Published 23 July 2021
“Broadcast stations should join hands with the government by not glamorising the activities of insurgents, terrorists, kidnappers, bandits”
– The controversial memo/warning of the National Broadcasting Commission to broadcast stations in Nigeria
Political paralinguistics, the experts call it; seemingly high sounding, some of its simple meanings include those aspects of political communication that send messages through body language, facial expressions, gestures, as well as the tone, tenor and pitch of verbal expressions. Hence, to illustrate the feature when police forcibly disperse a peaceful protest and arrest protesters, or invade the home of Sunday Igboho, campaigner for Yoruba nation, they are emphasising and gesturing that the regime of Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) will no longer tolerate those aspects and other types of dissent. Political body language resonates well beyond the specific action that conveys it. In like manner, the recent memo by the National Broadcasting Commission constitutes an omen and bellwether of ongoing and impending censorship of that media genre. Even before the recent attempt to amend the National Broadcasting Code to give the NBC more latitude, harassment of broadcast journalists had been very much on the menu of state-media relations. In the last few months, there have been arbitrary fines of broadcast houses such as the N5m sledge hammer in the place of N500,000 imposed on Nigeria Info 99.3 FM for airing an interview with a former deputy governor of the Central Bank and political activist, Dr Obadiah Mailafia. There also was the fine handed out to Jay FM 101.9, Jos for playing Falz’s song, ‘This is Nigeria’. That is not all. In the wake of the #EndSARS protests last year, heavy financial sanctions of N3m each were meted out to Arise TV, Channels TV, as well as African Independent Television/Raypower Radio for what was defined by the NBC as subversive framing of issues.