By Chinyere Nwagbo
PIRACY of another kind has become a thriving business, especially in areas where people little suspect the activities of pirates. One such area where life is being drained out of legitimate businesses is the satellite or cable TV signal piracy in some parts of Nigeria which is threatening to kill all our satellite TV operators.

In Warri, Delta State alone, this bad business thrives, and has become very big business for the perpetrators who include installers for cable networks and businessmen who can afford to purchase the equipment and pay their hirelings who themselves are installers.

Not a few thousand homes receive satellite TV transmissions daily through the activities of illegal cable vendors who, using co-axial cables, signal boosters and a network of wires, store up signals via the decoder and re-transmit these signals illegally, without the knowledge, consent or permission of the pay-TV owners to the consumers who pay a token of N500 monthly as subscription.

This means that satellite TV operators like DSTV, HiTV, Daarsat, My TV and others who have invested heavily in both content for their stations and expensive equipment for transmitting clear signals are robbed adaily of their subscriptions and perhaps the market which should have been theirs. For some, this figure is a drop in the ocean and may have little or no impact on their business but for others, piracy is the poison that led to their death.

According to Alex Sanco, an economist based in Warri, some cable operators have packed up mostly because of piracy while other lucky ones have escaped obliteration by reducing the size of their workforce, in order to survive and are unwilling to employ new staff which in itself has increased unemployment all because they are deprived of their profit. This could discourage further investors from investing in this business.

Like every stakeholder who has been affected by this destroyer, efforts have been made by the operators to curb this menace. According to an employee in a satellite TV company, surveillance teams who are working in conjunction with the law to apprehend the culprits have been set up.

But it has not been successful in its mission because of the corrupt nature of the police force and the volatile nature of Warri communities for fear that legal efforts could be converted to violence amongst inhabitants of the town.