By Ezra Ukanwa, Abuja

The National Broadcasting Commission, NBC, has been urged by the Northern Youths For Good Leadership and Governance, NYGLG, to closely monitor prominent Pay-TV companies in order to break the industry’s monopoly.

Recall that the Court of Appeal sitting in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital had on July 13th, 2022 ordered the NBC to direct Multichoice Nig. Limited to comply with the NBC Code by sublicensing requested channels to Metro Digital.

At a press conference, yesterday, in Abuja, the national president of NYGLG, Comr. Labaran Abubakar, bemoaned the fact that while the dominating operators do not keep any channels to themselves, they have been bullying global service providers and eliminating the operations of other PayTV operators.

Abubakar also decried that many Nigerian companies that ventured into the PayTv business in the last 20 years did not succeed because of the monopoly of the dominant player.

“We have been monitoring the situation in the broadcast industry in Nigeria with respect to the monopoly that exists in the industry. We want NBC to monitor the domain players more. There are underground plans to muscle the new PayTV platforms. This monopoly must stop.

“We, however, commend President Muhammadu Buhari, the minister for Information and Culture Alhaji Lai Mohammed, and the National Broadcasting Commission for ending the monopoly in the broadcasting industry through the amendment of the Nigerian broadcast code.

“We also thank them for their support in the Metrodigital versus Multichoice court cases where an order compelling the implementation of the amended code was issued by the Court of Appeal.

“With this development, many Nigerian companies can now participate in the industry, creating jobs and bringing down prices for the citizens.”

He added that even as the federal government has broken the monopoly, there was a need to closely monitor the situation to ensure that local businesses in the industry are treated fairly.