Nigeria’s Minister of Information, Labaran Maku, at the Extra Ordinary meeting of the National Council of Information held in Abuja few days ago stated that Nigerians will start paying to view television content. As the deadline for Nigeria’s migration to digital terrestrial television broadcasting draws near, Nigerian authorities will soon introduce content access fees to replace radio licence fees.

“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. 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,” he said.

The advantages of this include; improved financial capability for stakeholders to improve content and upgrade infrastructure, access to adequate funds for sustained upgrade of their infrastructure for effective service delivery for Nigeria Broadcasting Commission and other stakeholders.

He continued, “We are here because we are approaching the deadline and Nigeria must transit. We must do everything possible, we must work 24 hours to ensure that our country is not cut-off from the rest of the world.”