Sani Babadoko
9 March 2005
column
Kaduna — Since Nagarta Radio started test transmission on March 7, 2004 it has made significant impact on information dissemination in its area of coverage which includes the 19 northern states. Listeners have testified that its signals are received in Niger Republic, Cameroon and Chad beyond the country's borders and as far south as Lagos and River States within.
The private radio station has a digital 60 kilowatt transmitter which is received on 747 kimohertz on the medium wave band. Originally, Nagarta Communication Ltd was granted a frequency modulated (FM) license in 2002 to operate from Gusau, the Zamfara state capital, but according to the Director General of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Dr Silas Yisa, the management was advised to move to a more central location in Kaduna and have a medium wave licence for a wider coverage.
Technical quality and location is not what Nagarta Radio listeners say has endeared it to them. The birth of the radio station at this point in time has brought a gladdening wide choice to a large percentage of radio listeners, especially in Northern Nigeria. Most radio stations in the North, especially the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) Kaduna, are government owned and are likely to produce programmes not necessarily tailored to the needs and aspirations of their listeners but to the needs of the government in control.
Since the liberalisation of the broadcast industry in Nigeria in the 1980s, and the exit of government monopoly, northerners have waited and hoped that private investors in the north will invest in the sector with speed to create a vibrant network of private radio stations that would be tailored, not only to the satisfaction of their appetite as northerners but also designed to pursue the crucial and strategic needs of the people for social, cultural, economic and political growth and development. This expectation was not based on the fact that information is wealth but because radio broadcasting still remains the most popular means of imparting mass information to the people in both the rural and urban areas. However, this expectation could not be met because since the 1980s only Freedom Radio and now Nagarta have taken up the challenge in the north.
This situation points to a wide shortcoming between economic and political needs of the people and the initiative and patriotism of northern investors who, out of sheer short-sightedness, will rather invest in ventures with quick returns than in strategic sectors.
Yet Nigerians, especially northerners, listen more than they read and they maintain radios in their homes, market stalls, private and commercial vehicles, in their pockets and even while they tend to their cattle in the bush as their inseparable companion. It is the radio that gives them first hand information about their country and the world they live in. They get to know about goods and services from the radio, and above all, most of their entertainment in music and drama as well as spiritual guidance come through the radio.
The Northerner's avid interest in the radio is a direct consequence of historic development of radio broadcast services in Nigeria. The British colonial rulers introduced radio service, then known as redifussion, into Nigeria in 1932. It became really popular during the Second World War. The need to mobilise Nigerians, especially Hausa language speakers, to support the British war effort against Hitler's Germany, made the British to put radio into more effective use in the colonies. They introduced programmes in Hausa, which they beamed to all Hausa speaking areas of West Africa. It was the British that popularised the resonating voice of two distinguished Nigerian broadcasters. These two, Alhaji Isa Kaita and Alhaji Sani Kontagora, warmed the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Hausa service to the hearts of many Hausa listeners from its base in Accra, Ghana at that time.
Those who can remember those days can recall how the voices of these eminent broadcasters during the Second World War actually popularised the war against Hitler as well as idolised the bravery of the allied forces. Since then all the major ideological, economic and political powers of Western Europe, Asia, the United States of America as well as Russia made it their policy to pursue external radio broadcasting services to Africa. Through it, they are able to penetrate and influence the opinion and attitude of decision makers and the general public. The radio made them gain inroads into the minds of the people who in turn began to believe or at least share in the causes being pursued by the foreign powers.
This situation continued even more vigorously in the cold war years between the Western and the eastern world. Africa became one of the main targets of the struggle for the minds of the people. Major African languages, notably Swahili and Somali in East Africa, Arabic in the north and Hausa in the West, were carefully chosen for broadcasting services. These languages are still used by the BBC, Voice of America (VOA) Radio Deutch Welle, Radio Moscow and Radio Beijing among others.
It is significant to note that Northerners have become fond of these foreign radio stations, not because they prefer things foreign but they became addicted to them because they have grown to realise that any piece of information they receive from these foreign radio stations must have been subjected to the highest standard of broadcast journalism. In other words the information received from these stations is reliable, authentic and timely. In contrast, they regard the information from the radio stations within the country as often jaundiced, misleading, inaccurate or tailored to suit the caprices of the powers that be. In deed, news of what is happening in Kaduna is often learned through the BBC or VOA and not from local stations. According to most northern listeners, local stations report only what the government has done and quite often even that may prove to be misleading or exaggerated. They believe that the foreign stations using high professional expertise, human and material resources, which they deploy to information gathering and dissemination, enabled them to dominate the airwaves.
Yet much as the foreign radio station are able to satisfy the peoples' thirst for credible information, some yawing gap exists in the limited extent to which foreign programmes are able to cover crucial areas of interest to Nigerian listeners. This is the gap Nagarta Radio seemed to have committed itself to filling.
At this point, it bears repeating that the response of northern investors to the liberalisation of the broadcast industry, nay the media in general has been quite disappointing. So far, only two of the 17 private radio stations, Nagarta and Freedom, are owned by northern investors while only one television stations, Desmims Independent Television (DITV) is located and run in the north.
Nagarta Radio was born in this northern situation with the aim of quenching the thirst of Northerners for a credible radio station of their own. Northerners yearned for long for a radio station that will spring up directly form their culture, which understands their way of life and which responds actively to their social, economic, cultural, religious and political needs and aspirations. Nagarta is said to have been established as a response to the fact that government alone cannot possibly provide the entire infrastructure for the dissemination of the information needed by the people. The diversity of the political and economic interests of government, whether federal or state, places enormous constraints on the broadcast stations they own. Inevitably, there is bound to be wide differences in the operational methods and strategies between private and government owned broadcast institution.
So, listeners expect Nagarta Radio to seek, among others, to develop and provide programmes on political issues, as well as agricultural, health, arts, science technology and culture. Issues of religious and cultural relationships need to be tailored to strengthen the moral and traditional bonds of unity among Northerners in particular and Nigerians in general.
The listening public today is already sophisticated. They can distinguish between good and bad stations, and between credible and unreliable ones. The public therefore, expect the quality of programme production and presentation of Nagarta Radio must seek not only to match the existing standards in its operating environment but to surpass it. Its newsgathering must be based on unalloyed industry while its news reporting must be anchored on credibility and integrity and never sycophancy. Its credo in news reporting is: Truth no matter how bitter.
They also expect Nagarta Radio should make it a cardinal objective to win back lost radio audiences who have developed a sophisticated taste for foreign radio broadcasts. It can do this by giving them credible, home-grown programmes which they have done through such programmes as: Kowane Allazi and Kasar mu a yau
According to the chairman of Nagarta's board of directors, Alhaji Magaji Dambatta, Nagarta Radio aims, "to raise the standard of broadcasting in Nigeria to a very high level of excellence by utilising the knowledge, skills and creativity of our staff in enriching the lives of our listeners and widening their horizon.
"We will promote to the fullest our cultural, moral and religious values and will be uncompromising in the fight against all the evils manifesting in our society; against decadence and against indolence. We will try to inspire the confidence of our audience by identifying with their aspirations and being factual, objective and current," Alhaji Dambatta declared in his mission statement at the official commissioning of the station.
Giving an insight into the objectives of the station in an interview, the general manager of the station and a veteran of the Voice of America, Mallam Shehu Yusuf Maitama Kura said, "Our number one goal is that Nagarta Radio station will play a very important role in ensuring national unity, peace and stability. Number two, we have to educate our listeners on basic health issues like the pandemic of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and about general hygiene. How to keep their homes clean and tidy. On educational institutions and responsibilities, what can parents do to help their kids get go school?
"We are going to do anything to help people understand the social problem of almajirai, because this is a social problem. It has nothing to do with religion. It has nothing to do with ethnicity. Although the majority of our almajirai are Hausa speaking people it has nothing to do with religion. So we are going to do everything possible to enlighten parents about their responsibilities to their children."
Nagarta Radio, which broadcasts mainly in Hausa, according to its general manager, Mallam Shehu, will also focus on one of the problems that has caused a lot of violence among communities in the north, that is the indigene/settler dichotomy. "I think the issue of settler or non-indigenes is being used by politicians who want to score political points. But Nagarta Radio will do everything to unite the people and in fact that is our motto, that the north must be united because if the North is united Nigeria as a whole will be united, and if the North has a problem Nigerian will continue to have problems because it is only in the North that we have more than 250 ethnics groups in Nigeria and until and unless these ethic groups unite and have a purpose or goal there will never be any peace.
"We are like a family in the North there is nobody that is a settler and nobody who is an indigene not only in the North but in Nigeria as a whole and we have programmes tailored and targeted towards sensitising people to know that nobody is a settler and nobody is trying to get rid of anybody or displace anybody. Everybody has a responsibility as a citizen and also as a member of the community."
Mallam Shehu assured that Nagarta Radio would be a social crusader." Nagarta Radio has a strong message of unity in diversity because if God wants us to be one ethnic group or one religion he would have created us so. God has the power to make everybody to be Christians or Muslims, Hindus or Budhists. He did not do that and God created us into various ethnic groups with different religions for you and me to understand each other better. Whether you like it or not there are Muslims and Christians in Nigeria and the Nigerian constitution guarantees freedom of worship, freedom of thought, freedom of association and freedom of movement."
Mallam Shehu was however evasive as to the ownership of the radio station, "I want us to judged by what we do. I always tell people that the most important question to ask is what will Nagarta Radio do and our motto is, telling the truth no matter what." Some sources have pointed to the former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida as the owner while some pointed to the National Security Adviser, General Aliyu Gusau. Both were present at the official commissioning ceremony of Saturday, February 26, 2005.
However, it is how Nagarta Radio brings the advantages inherent in a private station to bear in giving its listeners what they want to hear that will matter most.
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