Nigeria’s quest to achieve digital switchover (DSO) next year may remain a wishful thinking due to lack of cash and political will, it was gathered at the weekend.
After a long wait, the 14-year-old project was given a new ray of hope with the analogue switchoff in Lagos on April 29, 2021.
With the Lagos DSO, analogue broadcasting has been switched off in six states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Starting with the Jos, Plateau State pilot launch in 2016, the project had also been launched in Kwara, Kaduna, Enugu, and Osun states.
Speaking during the Lagos launch, which Information and Culture Minister, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, had said was the groundbreaking resumption of the second phase of the project, he had said after a three-year stoppage, the project was now on “full throttle”.
About five months after, the project seemed to have been abandoned once again.
Going by the minister’s timetable, the DSO train was to move to Kano State on June 3, Rivers on July 8, Yobe on July 15, Gombe on August 12, Imo on August 24, Akwa Ibom on August 31, Oyo on September 9, Jigawa on September 23, Ebonyi on October 17, Katsina on October 21, Anambra on November 4 and Delta on November 18.
The Kano, Rivers and Yobe launches are yet to happen five months on.
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The Federal Government had set another deadline of next year for complete DSO based on the April time table.
But the Director, Public Affairs, National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Mrs Gloria Makinde, said the project was far from being abandoned.
While efforts to get her on phone were futile, text messages to her only elicited a terse response: “The next switch on is in Kano on 2nd November 2021.”
She refused to explain why the project suddenly went into the limbo after the promises of fresh fillip by the Federal Government.
It would be recalled that shortly after the 2006 International Telecoms Union (ITU’s) Regional Radiocommunication Conference (RRC-06) in Geneva, Nigeria, and 119 other countries, signed a treaty gave birth to the development of an ‘all-digital’ terrestrial broadcast services for sound and television. The treaty fixed June 2015 as timeline. Nigeria started preparations for the DSO journey early in 2007.
The Federal Government had approved June 17, 2012, as analogue switch off date, three years ahead of the ITU date. The NBC had said it would use the three years (June 17, 2012, to June 17, 2015) to address whatever hiccups that may arise from the switch-over and perfect the mechanism before the final date. But that was where it ended as the plans could not materialise due to what industry analysts described as a lack of political will on the part of government.