Flickr CC courtesy of Alan Levine
The Nigerian government has announced plans to introduce content access fees as replacements for radio licence fees as the nation moves towards next year’s deadline for digital migration.
Labaran Maku, Nigeria’s minister of information, made the announcement at the Extraordinary Meeting of the National Council of Information (NCI) in Abuja.
The minister said the content access fee is currently undergoing final adjustments and is expected to be approved by the Federal Executive Council before the deadline for digital migration.
According to him, government and other stakeholders would leverage on new technology to make the new format more effective than the old radio licence fees format.
“For a long time radio licences have not been collected and in other countries the public broadcast services are run from fees collected on broadcast content,” he said.
“But unfortunately in our country, the existing constitutional provision has made fee collection less effective.
“Now, we are undertaking a new format. We are taking advantage of the digital technology and looking beyond sending people to go from place to place to collect fees for broadcast content.”
