Ecowas member countries have announced a new date of June 2017 as the deadline for the transition from analogue to digital broadcast.
The Director General of the National Broadcasting Commission, Mr. Emeka Mba who disclosed this in an interview with Voice of Nigeria in Abuja, said the new date was fixed at the meeting of the regional body in Ghana.
“We have met at the ECOWAS level and announced a new date of June 2017 as the deadline for ECOWAS member countries,’’ he said.
According to VON, Mr. Mba said that Nigeria’s failure to meet the deadline would not affect the country’s broadcast signals or interference as most of the countries in the region did not also meet the International Telecommunication Union ITU deadline of June 17, 2015.
“Fortunately for us we do not have the problem of interference because most of the African countries have not gone digital so we are all almost in the same boat so for us interference is not the major issue at this time” he explained.
He noted that Nigeria’s failure to meet the June 17, 2015 deadline as set by the ITU, was due to lack of funds, but expressed optimism that the agency would generate funds soon to enable it meet the new deadline.
“The major challenge has been that of funding we could not get enough funds to mobilize and do some of the things that were critical, however we are now looking at other sources of funding to push this forward; thankfully we have a new government.”
We are confident that the new digital platform that we have all really worked hard to put in place will be launched on November first this year and even before then we are hoping President Mohammadu Buhari will launch the new digital mascot and we go further from there.” he added.
