by Thinus Ferreira
Nigeria's Federal High Court in Lagos has set aside the N5 million fines the country's controversial National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) slapped on Trust Television Network, MultiChoice's DStv, TStv and StarTimes Nigeria which all aired the BBC News Africa documentary "Bandit warlords of Zamfara" in the BBC Africa Eye programme in 2022.
The draconian NBC slapped Trust Television Network, as well as several other broadcasters in Nigeria with hefty fines for broadcasting a documentary from BBC News Africa on its BBC Africa Eye documentary programme, entitled "Bandit warlords of Zamfara" in 2022.
Besides Trust Television Network, the NBC fined MultiChoice and BBC News Africa airing the documentary on DStv, TelCom Satellite Limited running the now-defunct TStv, and NTA StarTimes Limited running StarTimes Nigeria which all showed the documentary.
The NBC wrongly claimed that news and documentaries about crime and banditry in Nigeria, broadcast on television, "undermined national security and contravened the Nigerian broadcasting code".
The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) and Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) took the NBC to court and filed a lawsuit against NBC as well as the Nigerian president and the country's caustic and clueless former information minister, Lai Mohammed.
The organisations wanted the court to declare "that the imposition of fines on the media houses is unlawful and amounts to a breach of legality, necessity, proportionality principles".
Justice Nicholas Oweibo ruled that the overreaching NBC lacks the legal power and authority to impose fines unlawfully and unilaterally on broadcasters or suspensions, or withdrawals of licences "or any form of punishment whatsoever on independent media houses for promoting access to diverse information on issues of public importance".
"A declaration is, hereby made that the provisions of the National Broadcasting Commission Act and the Nigerian Broadcasting Code which are arbitrarily being used by the defendants to sanction, harass, intimidate and restrict the independent media houses are inconsistent and incompatible with the Nigerian Constitution," he ruled.