The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) and Mr Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, have been urged by the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) to "urgently withdraw the 'last warning' and threat to revoke the licenses of broadcast stations and shut them down over their coverage of elections and post-election matters."
Source: Vanguard News
Last week, NBC threatened to remove broadcast stations' licenses and shut them down "if they continue to give unpatriotic people a platform to make statements that are subversive, nasty, and inflammatory, especially in the run-up to the 2023 Presidential Election."
However, the group claimed in a letter dated March 11, 2023, and signed by Kolawole Oluwadare, the deputy director of SERAP, that NBC's "last warning" and threat, if not immediately withdrawn, would restrict free speech and the capacity of broadcast stations.
Threatening to close down and withdraw broadcast stations' licenses just for performing their "watchdog duty" is, in the words of SERAP, "obviously incompatible with Nigeria's constitutional and international human rights duties."
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