The Nation Newspaper

Tag: DSO

  • N2.5b DSO contract: ICPC files charges against NBC DG, three others

    The Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission ( ICPC ) has filed charges against the Director-General of the National Broadcasting Commission(NBC) Is’haq Kawu Modibbo and three others over alleged irregularities in the award of a N2.5billion alleged Digital Switch Over (DSO) contract.

    The others are Dipo Onifade, Sir Lucky Omonuwa and Pinnacle Communications Limited.

    Omonuwa was accused of transferring N537. 25million out of the N2.5billion to a Bureau De Change operator for the dollar equivalent.

    The said dollar equivalent was delivered in cash to Omonuwa at his residence in Kaduna.

    All the suspects will face trial for 12-count charge before a Federal High Court in Abuja.

    But no date has been fixed for their arraignment.

    The charges, dated January 14, 2019, were however filed by Henry Emore and Adenekan Shogunle.

    The charges read in part: “That you, Is’haq Kawu Modibbo, Sir Lucky Omonuwa and Dipo Onifade sometime between December 2016 and May 2017 in Abuja within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, conspired with each other to use the position of , Is’haq Kawu Modibbo as the Director-General of the National Broadcasting Commission(NBC) to confer corrupt advantage on Sir Lucky Omonuwa, your friend and associate by recommending to the Hon. Minister of Information and Culture to approve payment of N2.5billion to Pinnacle Communications Limited, a private company owned by Sir Lucky Omonuwa as seed grant under the DSO of the Federal Government of Nigeria when you knew that the said company was not entitled to receive such grant and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 26(1) (c ) and punishable under Section 19 of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000.

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    “That you, Is’haq Kawu Modibbo on or about the 11th May, 2017 in Abuja, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court used your position as the Director-General of the National Broadcasting Commission(NBC) to confer corrupt advantage on Sir Lucky Omonuwa, your friend and associate by recommending to the Hon. Minister of Information to approve payment of N2.5billion to Pinnacle Communications Limited, a private company owned by Sir Lucky Omonuwa as seed grant under the DSO of the Federal Government of Nigeria when you knew that the said company was not entitled to receive such grant and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 19 of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000.

    “That you, Is’haq Kawu Modibbo on or about the 11th May, 2017 in Abuja, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court knowingly made a statement in a memo dated 11th May 2017 to the Minister of Information and Culture with intent to mislead him in the performance of his duties as supervisor of the disbursement of the sum of N10billion released by the Federal Government of Nigeria to facilitate the Digital Switch-Over Programme by recommending the payment of N2.5billion to Pinnacle Communications Limited, a private company owned by Sir Lucky Omonuwa and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 25(1) and punishable under Section 25(1) of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000.

    “That you, Sir Lucky Omonuwa on or about 2nd June, 2017 in Abuja within the jurisdiction of this court received the sum of N2.55billion paid into Zenith Bank Plc account No. 1023875804 of Pinnacle Communications Limited by NBC, when you knew that the said sum is the subject of an offence under Section 19 of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000 and you thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 24 and punishable under Section 19 of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000.

    “That you Sir Lucky Omonuwa between June-August 2017 transferred an aggregate sum of N537.25million out of the sum of N2.5billion in the Zenith Bank Plc Account No. 1023875804 operated by Pinnacle Communications Limited to Sadat Investment Limited, a Bureau De Change operator and thereafter took possession of the dollar equivalent of the said sum which was delivered to you in cash at your residence in Kaduna when you knew that the said sum is a direct proceed of criminal activities to wit: conspiracy, false information to a public officer and abuse of office.

    “You thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 11(a) and punishable under Section 15( C) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 s amended.”

  • DSO: firm tackles House Committee over N20b payment

    Pursuant to the drive to achieve digital switch over (DSO), a firm, Cable Channels Nigeria Limited (CCNL), has denied allegation that it collected about N20 billion from the Federal Government for the procurement and distribution of FreeTv decoders to Nigerian homes.

    CCNL, a consortium of re-broadcast companies and promoters of FreeTv in Nigeria, told reporters during a briefing in Abuja that there was no iota of truth in the allegation by the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee on Digitisation.

    Its Chairman, Sir Kunle Osisanya Afolabi, said it was disheartening that members of the House Committee failed to use facilities at their disposal to unearth the truth about the operations of the company to enable them appreciate the impact it has made in the industry over the years.

    Sir Afolabi, who spoke against the backdrop of the Reports of the Ad-hoc Committee and the controversy it has generated among industry players, insisted that even before the launch of DSO in December 2016, CCNL has remained a major industry player as a licensed Cable TV Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS) operator in the country with vast knowledge and experience spanning more than 30 years.

    He said: “CCNL is the official Nigerian licensed content aggregator for the DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television) and DSAT Free-to-view platforms with the responsibilities to manage; market and promote to the final consumers as a part of the Nigerian National DSO Strategy.

    “We have distributed about 630,000 FreeTv boxes in Abuja and Jos and their environs out of the 750,000 subsidised boxes as of today.

    “The truth is that we have not being paid a dime for the over 150 channels that Nigerians are enjoying in their homes and we have been using shareholders’ funds to sustain our businesses in the believe that, by the time things take shape in the industry, our shareholders will also benefit.

    “It is therefore misleading insinuations that CCNL was a new comer in the industry and has been paid huge amount of money to tune of about N20 billion. This is not true and it is unfortunate that members of the National Assembly could not use their foot-soldiers to authenticate the reality about our predicament.

    “Let me also emphasise that those dishing out some misinformation about the history of the industry in Nigeria do not know anything about the industry. But we believe the regulatory bodies will assert themselves and do the needful for the growth and development of the industry.

    “We also believe that all hope is not lost regarding the digital switchover, but we want the present problems facing the industry to be iron out as soon as possible.”

    Flanked by the Chief Executive Officer of the Company, Mr Rajiv Mekkat and other management staffers, Sir Afolabi said trouble started in the industry when some members of the ecosystem wanted to take on the roles of others.

    According to him, at the inception of the digitisation process, all MMDS re-broadcast operators spread across the country were forced to digitise their services at costs well over N10 billion.

    “In the transition from analogue to digital, these MMDS rebroadcast operators (12 of them) who had transited to digital since 2009 and operating under their collective business name Cable Channels Nigeria Limited were licensed to undertake their very familiar business of content aggregation.

    “The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) decided to give the cable operators the aggregation licence in order to accommodate their invaluable experience in content aggregation business, their knowledge of the distribution network which they have been doing for over three decades, their relevance in the new television configuration, to help save some jobs of their workforce, to recoup, even on a long time basis some of their losses in giving up their investment for the country to go digital in compliance with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) directive and mindful of the many benefits freeing up of the spectrum would have on the economy of the country and many other reasons.

     

  • DSO is on course – Lai Mohammed

    DSO is on course – Lai Mohammed

    The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed on Tuesday reassured that Digital Switch Over ( DSO ), the process of transition from analogue to digital television broadcasting was on course.

    The minister gave the reassurance when he received officials of the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON) led by its Chairman, Mr John Momoh in his office in Abuja.

    Addressing newsmen after a closed door session with the delegation, the minister said that government would carry all stakeholders along to ensure a successful transition.
    “The meeting discussed the overall survival of the industry and the good thing about it is that we have all agreed to work together.

    “We also agreed that none of the concerns raised by stakeholders are insurmountable with the cooperation of all.

    “We resolved that the DSO is on course and the cheery news is that BON has agreed to give its contributions and ideas that will ensure a successful switch over,’’ he said.

    The minister said the meeting also deliberated on other issues affecting the broadcast industry including, audience measurement, licensing regime, industry debt issue plan and FM Radio transmitter power and coverage area.

    Momoh, who was also at the briefing, said that the meeting afforded members of his organisation the opportunity to let the minister and other stakeholders understand the challenges inhibiting their operations.

    Momoh, who is the Chairman of Channels Television, said BON members were also briefed on what government was doing on DSO.

    “We have a better picture of the DSO and we also have the agreement to work together for the success of the transition.

    “We are leaving here happy and we believe it is a work in progress. We are confident that at the end of the day, we will have a successful DSO and an industry that is thriving,’’ he said.

    Speaking in the same vein, the Director-General of National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Modibbo Kawu said the commission would work with relevant stakeholders including BON.

    He stressed that his commission’s relation with BON was central to the success of DSO.

  • DSO: firm tackles House Committee on N20b payment

    A firm, Cable Channels Nigeria Limited (CCNL), has denied allegation that it collected N20 billion from the Federal Government for the procurement and distribution of FreeTv decoders to Nigerian homes for digital switch over (DSO).

    CCNL, a consortium of re-broadcast companies and promoters of FreeTv in Nigeria, told reporters during a briefing in Abuja that there was no iota of truth in the allegation of the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee on Digitisation.

    Its Chairman, Sir Kunle Osisanya Afolabi, said it was disheartening that members of the House Committee failed to use the facilities at their disposal to unearth the truth about the operations of the company to enable them appreciate the impact it has made in the industry over the years.

    Sir Afolabi, who spoke against the backdrop of the Reports of the Ad-hoc Committee and the controversy it has generated among industry players, insisted that even before the launch of DSO in December 2016, CCNL has remained a major industry player as a licensed Cable TV Multichannel Multipoint Distribution Service (MMDS) operator in the country with vast knowledge and experience spanning more than 30 years.

    He said: “CCNL is the official Nigerian licensed content aggregator for the DTT (Digital Terrestrial Television) and DSAT Free-to-view platforms with the responsibilities to manage; market and promote to the final consumers as a part of the Nigerian National DSO Strategy.

    “We have distributed about 630,000 FreeTv boxes in Abuja and Jos and their environs out of the 750,000 subsidised boxes as of today.

    “The truth is that we have not being paid a dime for the over 150 channels that Nigerians are enjoying in their homes and we have been using shareholders’ funds to sustain our businesses in the belief that, by the time things take shape in the industry, our shareholders will also benefit.

    “It is therefore misleading insinuations that CCNL was a new comer in the industry and has been paid huge amount of money to the tune of about N20 billion. This is not true and it is unfortunate that members of the National Assembly could not use their foot-soldiers to authenticate the reality about our predicament.

    “Let me also emphasise that those dishing out some misinformation about the history of the industry in Nigeria do not know anything about the industry. But we believe the regulatory bodies will assert themselves and do the needful for the growth and development of the industry.

    “We also believe that all hope is not lost regarding the digital switchover, but we want the present problems facing the industry to be iron out as soon as possible.”

    Flanked by the Chief Executive Officer of the Company, Mr Rajiv Mekkat and other management staffers, Sir Afolabi said trouble started in the industry when some members of the ecosystem wanted to take on the roles of others.

    According to him, at the inception of the digitisation process, all MMDS re-broadcast operators spread across the country were forced to digitise their services at costs well over N10 billion.

    “In the transition from analogue to digital, these MMDS rebroadcast operators (12 of them) who had transited to digital since 2009 and operating under their collective business name Cable Channels Nigeria Limited were licensed to undertake their very familiar business of content aggregation.

    “The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) decided to give the cable operators the aggregation licence in order to accommodate their invaluable experience in content aggregation business, their knowledge of the distribution network which they have been doing for over three decades, their relevance in the new television configuration, to help save some jobs of their workforce, to recoup, even on a long time basis some of their losses in giving up their investment for the country to go digital in compliance with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) directive and mindful of the many benefits freeing up of the spectrum would have on the economy of the country and many other reasons.

    “However, CCNL is the only stakeholder in the comity of DSO operators’ chain that has not been funded till date. We rather paid licence fee and generate funding for our operations,” he said.

  • DSO and future of broadcasting

    Television broadcasting is of so much importance to citizens and the Nigerian state as a means of national integration and cultural development in a fast-paced global arena which is driven mainly by communication technology. Nigeria has fallen far short in its bid to catch up with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) standards in terms of quality and timing in switching over to digital broadcasting.

    Whereas Nigeria has missed more than two deadlines in the digital switchover process to the disappointment of many Nigerians and ITU, what has become more embarrassing is the claim that the transmitters installed by Integrated Television Services (ITS) have been discontinued by the original equipment manufacturer more than 10 years ago. Tony Dara, an acclaimed broadcast engineer who had acted as a consultant to the National Assembly on Nigeria’s digital switch over brought this fact to the public sphere and the famed Nigerian factor has begun to set in.

    Responding to the finding on installation of obsolete transmitters that have been discontinued by the original equipment manufacturer, ITS General Manager, Rotimi Salami did not contradict the finding but instead sought to rationalise using them on the ground of “room for backward integration” existing in broadcast technology.

    At a time the rest of the world is striving to keep pace with the innovations and dynamism of digital signals broadcast,  while Nigerians  make do with antiquated modems so that the technical epilepsy associated with  electricity supply will be transferred  into our broadcasting infrastructure’s  “compatibility” hardware.  It was the same sickening surrender to stagnant development that led ITS into retaining old buildings and facilities to house the Digital Switch Over (DSO) in Jos and Ilorin, another flaw identified in the Dara Report that ITS failed to debunk. According to ITS GM, there was no reason to even consider new buildings for the DSO process because nine years ago the White Paper on DSO recommended that the “existing and massive” broadcast transmission infrastructure of the NTA, VON and FRCN should form the backbone for the new broadcast signal distributor. Someone should ask ITS why these old buildings were not even considered for renovation.

    Again, to add pseudo-savvy to the idleness of its initiatives, ITS GM exposed the fallacies integrated into decisions by declaring that “a building does not determine the quality of transmission, rather (sic) it is the state of the equipment”. This evidently cannot be technically applicable to a backwardly integrated compatibility-chasing choice of obsolete equipment that will be depending on perpetual coupling and combinations to deliver digital output from analogue inputs! What would it have cost to put up new buildings designed with the spatial and other specifications suitable for workflow in the DSO which is not comparable to the decades old analogue equipment “existing” in NTA?

    It is unfortunate that these are the untenable, illogical and technically bankrupt responses that ITS churned out in a vexatious attempt to dismiss the clear compilation of the deceptive and defective foundation laid for the DSO in Nigeria by the federal government’s own agents and agencies.

    The crux of this disturbing matter is that over N1.7 billion was collected by the NTA-ITS from federal government coffers specifically as take-off grant for the DSO pilot project! With such a humongous budget, why should their DSO project be relying on discontinued obsolete equipment when at every material time there were latest successor models of the digital transmitters by the same manufacturer which are in fact future-assured technology and not the retrograde discarded systems being foisted on the country? Does Nigeria have to wait until the analogue-fanatics pushing backward integration in Nigeria while the world is on digital fast track to the future in broadcast technology are themselves rendered obsolete by age and tenure before we can catch up with the rest of the world in digital broadcasting?

    It is also intriguing that the industry regulator, National Broadcasting Corporation(NBC) which is charged with monitoring and supervising the broadcast industry in Nigeria has so far maintained a loud silence while the ITS scandal unfolds. NBC should have been the first to identify any deviation from set standards and impose the necessary regulatory sanctions to ensure compliance, especially at the critical stage of commencement of the DSO. The only conclusion this surprising negligence of duty and aloofness to the exposure of malpractice raises is culpable collusion. This deplorable attitude was responsible for the initial installation of obsolete equipment by ITS as well as the cover-up of the scandal during and after the celebrated launching of the Jos pilot project.

    An indication of the culpability of the NBC was given the other day on Channels TV when Armstrong Idachaba, the NBC director specifically charged with the monitoring of broadcasting erased any doubts about the Dara Report findings  and the implication that his organisation failed to perform its fundamental duty of monitoring and regulating the very first official roll-out of the DSO in the Jos Pilot Project . Confronted with the Dara Report’s shocking revelation that ITS commenced the implementation of the DSO in Jos by deploying equipment that have been discontinued by the original equipment manufacturer, Idachaba declared that ITS more competent to respond and even offered contact details for Channels TV to “Bring them in and let them explain”. In other words, NBC as the government regulatory agency in broadcasting and the DSO in particular, could neither deny nor confirm that ITS actually rolled out obsolete analogue equipment for the Jos pilot digital switch over project!

    The same Idachaba had earlier bragged that “Jos was a fantastic experience for NBC”, that “all the theorising and planning we did regarding framework for DSO we had a chance to implement in Jos” and crowed about how the local people in Jos were enjoying digital terrestrial television free of charge on 30 channels. He obviously was not expecting to be asked about the Dara Report and was visibly flustered having to literally eat his own words by admitting also that ITS had not met the 30 channels requirement and had still not covered the entire Plateau State (not even the entire Jos township according to Dara Report), since the fanfare launch in 2015 in violation of the timelines set by the NBC.

    The NBC cannot feign ignorance of the damning revelation of the Dara Report without admitting deliberate negligence to perform its statutory responsibility as government regulator of the broadcast industry. Idachaba’s self-censoring refusal on national TV to give a honest and transparent response to the Dara Report as NBC’s head of broadcast monitoring is not good enough. By an unexpected turn of events, the NBC has been caught on camera exposing the deliberate derailment of its regulatory role from public interest to the pecuniary interests of a mafia-type cult of government officials intent on a digital swindle operation under the cover of the DSO.  Against the background of several deliberate failures of NBC to meet set deadlines for the project launch in the last five or more years, the confessional conspiratorial conduct of the regulator in the “pilot” plus the weighty material evidence of the Dara Report should convince the federal government beyond reasonable doubt that corruption will not kill DSO NIGERIA if the culprits can be brought to book.

    It is therefore necessary to urge the federal government to revisit and expand the scope of the initial investigation by the EFCC that resulted in the sacking and arraignment of the former DG of the NBC. It is quite clear now that it is not only the handling of the contracts for set top box “manufacturers” that was riddled with financial irregularities and violations of due process but also the entire process of implementing the DSO. Indeed even the surreptitious manner by which StarTimes hijacked and proceeded to subjugate its supposed license holder NTA in the pay TV sector calls for thorough investigation.

    The House of Representatives Committee on DSO should take the lead by concluding its investigations and releasing a report of its findings. Sad it is that the jinx that has bedevilled our DSO since 2014 remains a cog in the wheel of progress in 2017. Now that we know where the problem comes from, we stand a better chance of eliminating it once and for all. The revelation by Tony Dara is the best thing to ever happen to DSO in Nigeria.

     

    • Yakubu Esq is a legal/government affairs analyst.