Don advocates deployment of community broadcasting to tackle disease, poverty, ignorance, backwardness

A Professor, Dede J. Konkwo, said unless adequate attention is paid to massive and concentrated deployment of emancipatory community broadcasting in rural areas of Nigeria, the fight against poverty, disease control, ignorance and backwardness would remain a mirage.

The don disclosed this while delivering a lecture at the 29th inaugural lecture of the Imo State University, Owerri, yesterday, titled, ‘Contradictions In A Land of Plenty: Mitigating the Pangs of Rural Poverty In Nigeria Through Community Broadcasting.’

Prof. Konkwo, the Dean, Faculty of Communication and Media Studies of the university, also said there is bound to be scale up of “economic disempowerment, political apathy, sale of votes to highest bidders during elections, perpetuation of poverty and enthronement of inept leadership,” among others, in Nigeria.

He lamented neglect of rural development despite abundant natural resources in those areas.

Konkwo, a University of Vienna, Austria, trained professor of Broadcast Communication, noted he would have made his submission in 2014’s inaugural lecture, regretting it was aborted by then management. He, therefore, thanked the present management of the university, led by the Vice- Chancellor, Prof. Uchefula Chukwumaeze, for making nit happen this year.

He said: “I advocate for emancipatory use of rural community broadcasting by the rural poor to lift themselves from ignorance, disease, poverty, and backwardness whenever the government sees the need to realise the project.”

The event, which was attended by the representative of the Vice – Chancellor, Deputy Vice -Chancellor (Academic), Prof. Chigbo Ajero, among other past vice chancellors, as well as top officials and students of the institution, Konkwo, who was promoted a professor in 2010, added: “Majority of Nigerians, who live in rural areas, have not been able to lift themselves from relative poverty. Their economic disempowerment has also translated into relative political apathy, which has necessitated sale of votes to highest bidders during elections, regardless of who the political candidate is. This development has perpetuated the vicious circle of poverty and inept leadership ravaging Nigerian society.”