The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the merger of high profile agencies, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC). The merger of the two agencies is to make the duo become one powerful and indivisible entity.
According to sources, the idea of the merger was raised by the ministry of Communications Technology. At a meeting chaired by President Goodluck Jonathan which lasted into the night, No. 1 citizen was highly impressed by the idea of the merger and most of the FEC members concurred on the issue.
One source who claimed anonymity revealed that “the ministry of Communications Technology pointed to digitization programme and insisted that streamlining the regulators would be a necessity to achieving the country’s target of fully migrating to digital broadcast by 2015.”
Our source however learnt that officials from the Ministry of Information kicked against the merger in the course of the last Wednesday’s FEC meeting. Their argument was that focus should be on infrastructural challenges as well need to keep the broadcast industry under close watch to guide against abuse.
The merger is aimed at overhauling outdated regulations to better manage the country’s dramatic growth in computer and internet usage over the past decade. The draft also targets improving access, investment, research and development, and plans legislation in cyber crime, ethical and moral conduct, privacy, copyright, intellectual property rights, piracy and e-transactions.”
Over time the merging of the broadcasting regulator and its telecommunication counterpart has been a contemporary issue, which has generated a lot of deliberations with both sides of the divide arguing for and against with worthy points.{jcomments on}