The Coalition of Northern Groups, CNG, says it came out of a fruitful meeting with officials of MultiChoice, operators of DSTV/GOTV brokered by the Director General of the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, NBC, to settle the issue of non-inclusion of northern-based television channels on the DSTV platform.
A statement by the spokesperson of the group, Abdazeez Suleiman on Thursday said the meeting held at the boardroom of the Commission, had in attendance all NBC magagenent officials, top national officials of the CNG and representatives of DSTV.
“The meeting accepted three northern based television channels, Liberty, Tozali and Rahama for consideration by Multichoice and agreed to make it a continuous process.
“The Multichoice appreciated the decent intervention of the CNG and assured that eligible and interested northern based television channels would be considered on board the DSTV.
“Acknowledging the prompt response to its representations by the NBC, the northern coalition drew a link between the current security situation to lack of credible communication in the languages understand by natives and called the attention of Multichoice to the huge responsibility falling on it to bridge that vacuum.”
The group had accused MultiChoice of perpetrating bias towards northern media-owned channels on its per-pay-view network services.
In its petition, which gave rise to the meeting, the CNG expressed worry over the “nepotistic business disposition of MultiChoice” in marginalising the North in the pay TV sector as there were private northern-owned TV brands with the technical, financial and human resource capacity to feature on its platforms.
