NTA Will Compete With CNN With $500 Million – Lai

By Ayodele Oluwafemi

Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has disclosed that the $500m loan requested by the ministry to beef up operations at the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) would make the television network compete with Cable News Network, CNN.

Mohammed made this known when he appeared before Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Loans to defend the $500m loan the ministry applied for from President Muhammadu Buhari’s $29.96b loan for funding critical infrastructure in the country.

The Minister said that if the fund was approved, NTA would upgrade its signal to enable the station meet international standard.

He also noted  that the creative industry was not just about Television alone, but films, music, fashion and photography, adding that there was no better platform to showcase Nigeria’s talents than having a digital system.

In his words, “If this project is approved, there will be more visibility for our people in the music, fashion and film industries.

“In 2014, we made $23m from music alone and about $53m in 2019 and we are looking forward to making $83m in 2025. You can imagine the kind of growth we will have if only we digitise all the NTA stations in the country.

“The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 2006 gave June 17, 2015 as deadline for all members of the organisation to migrate from analogue to digital. Regrettably, we were unable to meet the deadline along side most countries in sub-Sahara Africa, the deadline was moved to 2017, which was not reliable and today the target is June 17, 2020.”

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