Chapter 6

Situation of Community Radio in Nigeria

By Akin Akingbulu and Miriam Menkiti

The development of a truly plural broadcasting landscape, incorporating a thriving community radio sector along with other tiers, is a key item of engagement in Nigeria. As the country strives to overcome her contemporary development challenges, she cannot but grapple with the provision of access to communication resources for the majority of its 140 million citizens.

Sixty-two years of state broadcasting monopoly and a further 12 years of private/commercial participation failed to provide adequate media access to the people. But the story changed when vigilant stakeholders put their ideas and activities into a synergy and began a process of positive engagement.

Community broadcasting was not a feature of the Nigerian media scene, even at the early period of the present democratic period. Indeed, the Nigerian political environment was adverse to its development, especially because of the long years of military rule that restricted freedom of expression.

All that began to change when, in 2003, a collaboration of two international organizations, the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) and the Panos Institute West Africa (PIWA), with the Institute for Media and Society (IMS), launched an advocacy program, the Initiative on Building Community Radio in Nigeria.

In 2005 and 2006, the initiative took the advocacy to higher levels. A national conference capped the zonal workshops and generated outputs such as a corporate structure for community radio stakeholders and a new Plan of Action. This was followed by a series of sectoral engagements that featured international development bodies and local groups such as the World Bank and the Nigerian media. An AMARC regional seminar twinned with a Nigerian CR Policy Dialogue in Abuja also took centre stage.

With the message of CR development going down to the grassroots through the nationwide awareness-raising, the engagement of government agencies was also being pursued. Before long, the government began to respond to stakeholders’ demands. From 2004 to 2006, it instituted at least three policy development/reform processes: a review of the National Mass Communication Policy, the Development of a National Frequency Spectrum Management Policy and a National Community Radio Policy.

The CR initiative engaged these processes by developing and submitting comprehensive memoranda into them. The release of the final documents by the government is being awaited.

Community radio and democratization/governance

Nigeria returned to civil rule in 1999 after more than 15 years of military dictatorship. Over the past eight years, the public space has relatively become freer, and basic freedoms, including freedom of expression and the media, have improved while democratic institutions are developing.

But challenges remain. There is still a substantial deficit in the development and provision of social infrastructure, much of which went into decay during the years of the military. Transparency and accountability have not become deeply embraced cultures in governance institutions. The electoral system has not made any appreciable advance. And the grassroots, where the majority of the population lives, have not benefited from democracy.

Increased public oversight of governance institutions is paramount. But to achieve this, there must be an expansion in the information made available to the people about activities of government agencies. There must be dissemination of public information and a follow-up with independent, diverse, critical analyses and opinions. There must be credible information and the exchange of views to enable people to make informed decisions and engage governance processes.

These are roles that upcoming community radio stations will perform at the grassroots, where the majority of citizens live. It is expected that the emerging community radio sector will fill the wide gap on information about the Millennium Development Goals objectives left out by mainstream media. As genuine voices of the people, they will facilitate discussion, understanding of the issues and participation of the people in tackling the challenges. As grassroots organs, they will effectively engage governance institutions at that level, including the 774 local governments across the country.

Emancipation of women

Nigerian women continue to make significant contributions to national development, but many hurdles still prevent their full participation in the affairs of the nation.

For example, many local cultures approve of marriage, even forced marriage, for underage girls, and deny inheritance rights for widows. Women do not have equal access with their male counterparts to key positions in the workplace, including political offices. Today, more than 70 per cent of the country’s citizens who live below the poverty line are women and fewer than 30 per cent of schoolchildren are females.

Given its antecedents as an advocate of many progressive causes, the country’s mainstream media was identified as possessing the potential to make a greater contribution to the advancement of women and positioning them as key drivers of the country’s development process.

But the verdict of development scholars and practitioners and other stakeholders of the media scene have been that: “it appears the media have chosen a role reversal, by being an instrument of women’s subjugation and disempowerment.”

According to them:

• Women have continued to experience barriers in accessing information and actively participating in the communication process.

• Despite the fact that women constitute about half of the Nigerian population, they have been rendered invisible by the media.

• Women’s points of view and perspectives on the society are rarely represented, or the manner of their representation reflects men’s biases and assumptions. Women’s issues hardly ever receive proportionate space and prominence.

• In mainstream broadcast media, programming is often the exclusive domain of men.

• Media culture has generally thrived on the use of sexist language and symbolism that are generally offensive, derogatory and have the overall effect of putting women in subservient positions.

• Media policy, legislation and regulations have also skewed contents against women.

As community radio becomes a reality in Nigeria, a priority on its agenda should be engendering development in this country. Its strategy will entail including gender-sensitive policies as part of the operational framework of the stations.

This will involve, among other things, creating a balance in women representation and ensure diversity in programming, establishing editorial guidelines that give positive portrayal of women and providing representative management space so that women can have equal access to key positions in all sectors.

Last word

Nigeria may not have been fast in developing community radio. But the results emerging from the advocacy work of the past four years indicate that the CR sector emerging in our country will grow to rank among the best in Africa and the world.

Stakeholders in Nigeria are passionate about and committed to the realization of this vision. With the support of AMARC and other international partners, we should have louder songs of celebration on CR development in Nigeria before long.