Dr Garba Abari, the Director-General, National Orientation Agency has urged the media to be at the forefront of the task of nation building to bring about stability in the country.
Abari made the call at the 66th General Assembly of the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria in Abuja on Tuesday.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that during the assembly, the new chairman and vice chairman of BON were sworn in.
The theme of the assembly is “Concept of Change: The Media and Nation Building”.
Abari said that the media had a duty to monitor governance, expose vices and celebrate integrity.
He expressed concern that some Nigerians, especially the youths, have little respect for the core values that once held the nation together.
Abari said: “Our core values such as dignity of labour, commitment to hard work, respect for elders and life, good neighbourliness, which was once cherished by our traditional society is in deficit.
“The family institution has collapsed as well as all our core values; digitization has put our youths at a variance with our culture.
“The Nigerian media must know that they must lead the way in nation building; BON must come up with strategies to combat this form of imperialism.’’
The director-general noted that the Nigerian media was known to be the most vibrant in the African continent.
Abari said that NOA and BON would continue to work together in order to bring about the desired change in the country.
In his remarks, Bayo Onanuga, the Managing Director, News Agency of Nigeria called on BON to use the platform offered by the assembly to brainstorm on how to align content and services to meet the expectations of the people.
Onanuga said: “I also expect the assembly to assess roles and responsibilities of key stakeholders, present strategies to ensure that broadcasters and media owners are able to handle the content question as digitization becomes a reality.
“I hope the assembly would also discuss, review and evaluate strategic and operational issues and solutions in relation to the acquisition, generation, distribution and regulation of broadcasting and media content in the digital ecosystem.”
According to him, NAN is a stakeholder in the digitization process because “we are gearing up to provide you with audio and video content”.
Also speaking, Dr Yemisi Bamgbose, the National President, Radio, Television, Theatre and Art Workers Union of Nigeria said that broadcasting had become very difficult especially in the public sector.
Bamgbose said that the lack of stability in the sector was hindering its progress.
According to him, many state-owned stations are not prepared for migration to the digital world.
He, therefore, tasked the incoming chairman to look into the licence rates for radio and television, adding that the local governments had no business collecting the rates.
Bamgbose urged all heads of media organisations to pay serious attention to the health of their staff by ensuring regular medical check-up for staff, noting that media practitioners were dying early.
Bamgbose said: “We conducted a survey and discovered that people working in the broadcast media are not living long.
“You look at the statistics we got; after retirement say after eight to 10 years, our members die, even those in the service die early too.
“We do a lot of things dangerous to our health and we do not go for check-up regularly.”
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