By Emmanuel Elebeke

ABUJA — Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, NBC, has said Nigeria needed between N60 billion and N80 billion to achieve full coverage of the country from analogue to digital broadcasting by June 17, 2015.

Director General of the commission, Dr. Emeka Mba, who disclosed this at an event to mark the 22nd  anniversary of the commission in Abuja, said the amount was an estimated cost of procuring set up boxes and subsidy by Federal Government, and cost of buyback subsidy by broadcast stations, cost television stations would incur on publicity of the process among other cost required to achieve the ITU dateline.

The International Telecommunications Union, ITU, gave June 17, 2015 as dateline for all countries across the globe to switch over all their broadcasting communications from analogue to digital platform.
According to him, the estimated cost is nothing to worry about if Nigeria is committed to meeting the transition target, especially when compared to countries like United Kingdom and United States that spent £1 billion and $40 million respectively as well as France that also spent about two billion Euros.

He said Nigeria needed a minimum of 40 million Set Up Boxes to key fully into the transition programme, which he said could create jobs for millions of youths if Nigeria could assemble the equipment locally.