‘Revisit blueprint on digitization’, expert tells Mohammed
Unless report of Presidential Advisory Committee (PAC) on Transition from Analogue to Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting is revisited and its recommendations implemented fully, Nigeria’s efforts to meet the deadline of June 17, 2017 would be in jeopardy.
This is the submission of the former Director-General, National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Alhaji Kamil Yomi Bolarinwa in a chat with The Guardian at the weekend.
According to him, the digitisation plan became complicated “when middlemen were brought into the process of procuring Set Top Box,” while noting further that the latest step by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed inaugurating
“Inter-Ministerial Committee on the Digital Switch Over (DSO)” would compound the situation.
Information Minister, last week in Abuja inaugurated the new panel with the charge to meet the deadline by June 2017. ‘’We don’t have an option, we must meet the 2017 deadline. Otherwise, our TV sets will be useless to us. We cannot afford to be left behind,’’ Alhaji Mohammed had told the committee that comprises representatives of the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture as well as that of Trade and Investment, Central Bank of Nigeria, and the Nigeria Customs Service.
The representatives of the Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON), Nigerian Communications Commission, National Broadcasting Commission, DigiTeam Nigeria, Set-Top Box Manufacturers, Signal Distributors, CCNL, and Television Enterprises (TVE) are also members of the committee.
Alhaji Bolarinwa, a broadcast engineer who is now, President, Nasrullahi-l-Fatih Society (NASFAT), said only way to put digitization back on track is
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