I wrote in USAfrica Online in 1996 that Nigeria’s broadcasting industry was at a crossroads. While state television continued to dominate the airwaves, several newly licensed private broadcasting stations were trying to find space despite significant startup costs and a military government uncertain about what the future held for them. At the time, the big question was whether private radio and television would be able to establish themselves at all.
Thirty years later, with a democratic government in place, the bigger question is whether private broadcasting has delivered anything, and the second is whether private broadcasters have lived up to the promises they made when they entered the business.
The critical moment came on August 24th, 1992, when the Babangida regime enacted Decree No. 38, ending sixty years of state control of the airwaves and creating the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to regulate and issue licenses to private broadcasters. In 1994, Africa Independent Television became the first successful example of private broadcasting operating in a competitive environment. Although Decree No. 38 was amended in 1999 and codified into law in 2004, the core concept has remained the same, namely private ownership and regulation. By this single standard alone, deregulation has been a success in scope. Before 1992, fewer than thirty broadcast stations operated in Nigeria. Today, nearly 800 stations are spread across Nigeria’s 36 states. Channels Television, Arise News, TVC, and Silverbird now compete for the same audiences that NTA once monopolized.
Although deregulation has increased the number of broadcast outlets available to the Nigerian public, it has not produced greater diversity of viewpoints or greater independence among those outlets. Nigeria remains near the bottom of the World Press Freedom Index, and since 2013, Nigerian journalists have suffered well over a thousand documented assaults, most carried out by security agents and/or public officials. For years, civil society organizations have been litigating against the NBC to limit its ability to fine broadcasters unilaterally without due process. Finally, in November of last year, a federal high court granted civil society relief by declaring that the NBC may no longer impose fines on broadcasters without due process. Nonetheless, in early April of this year, the NBC warned broadcasters again that it will continue to monitor broadcasts. The new Media Bill, currently making its way through the National Assembly, would provide additional tools for government regulators to monitor what is being said on social media, even as citizen reporting via social media (most notably in response to the #EndBadGovernance protests earlier this month) has emerged as a credible means for holding accountable what state and private broadcasters report.
At the same time, nearly two decades after Nigeria embarked on a digital switchover program, the switchover remains incomplete. Over $600 million has been spent on digital switchover since 2009, and the government’s current fix for getting people switched over to digital includes launching a satellite-based service called FreeTV. Unfortunately, that service requires a dish and a decoder that far too many households lack access to. It appears that free television does not mean accessible television.
While broadcast remains subject to the NBC, platforms such as X and Facebook are not regulated in Nigeria. This dual use of social media has played both sides of the coin. As shown during the 2020 #EndSARS protests and the 2024 #EndBadGovernance protests, social media has enabled young Nigerians to form organizing groups, document instances of police misconduct, and compel coverage of stories that many private and state broadcasters were reluctant to air. Young Nigerians have thus found an independent voice on social media, where deregulation failed to deliver one within traditional broadcasting. However, social media has also allowed hate speech and other forms of incendiary rhetoric to flourish unchecked during elections, including the 2023 election that split along Nigeria’s three major ethnic divisions. Researchers today describe a form of “digital tribalism” in which social media algorithms favor divisive language over other forms of expression, thereby fueling long-standing conflicts in Nigeria. The same tool that has enabled generations of Nigerians to bypass state-controlled media and many private broadcasters to express themselves is also allowing Nigeria’s long-standing fault lines to become increasingly inflamed while operating largely outside any regulatory framework described above.
This disconnect is also the main thread linking my column written nearly twenty-eight years ago to today. I wrote then that Nigeria’s rural and poorer populations were rapidly becoming an “information-poor” class of citizens. I advocated reserving additional licenses for community and religious broadcasters funded by a subsidy mechanism. Some of this has occurred. The divide, however, has not closed — rather than decreasing geographically, it has shifted economically, from which cities had stations to who could afford a decoder, a data plan, or reliable broadband.
Nothing I write here changes what deregulation accomplished. There are now hundreds of broadcast outlets competing with one another, in addition to a thriving social media landscape that gives everyday Nigerians a louder, more direct voice than any decree envisioned. Nigerian audiences also trust their media significantly more than audiences in virtually any other country globally. Trust and independence, however, are not synonymous, nor is amplification equivalent to accountability. Thirty years after a military decree opened broadcasting opportunities for private players, the ongoing task of liberating the entire media system from governmental influence, pressure, concentrated ownership, internet disinformation, and economic constraints on who gets to be heard continues.
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♦ Chris Ulasi is on the Editorial Board of The West African Pilot News. He contributes stories about culture and tradition, elite politics, ethnicity and national integration, civil society, and social movement. He is a university professor, community builder, poet, film producer, recording the emergent Nollywood cultural history through film.
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