The federal government on Tuesday hinted that it had successfully shut the signals from Radio Biafra because it had not been licensed to operate in Nigeria.
The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information, Dr. Sade Yemi-Esan gave the hint after briefing President Muhammadu Buhari on the state of affairs in the ministry at the presidential villa, Abuja.
Yemi-Esan said, at the moment, the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) and security forces in the country were hunting those behind the radio to arrest them.
Her words: “We also gave a report on that. Right now the signals from radio biafra has been jammed successfully by the NBC.
“The commission is also working with security agencies to get those that are behind that radio because it is an illegal radio. It is not licensed by anybody to be on the airwave in Nigeria”.
She said President Buhari urged the ministry to step up its publicity level to enable Nigerians know what the current administration was doing in terms of governance.
Yemi-Esan added that Buhari urged them to reduce the rate of piracy in the country to enable Nollywood get their dues in film production.
She said, “We are happy with the response we got and the concerns of Mr President on the work we are doing, especially the publicity aspect. He wants us to intensify publicity because he wants every Nigerian to know about the policies and programmes of this government.
“He also raised concerns about piracy in Nollywood and he has instructed us to work harder to ensure that the producers of Nollywood films get what is due to them and that we reduce piracy to the barest minimum”.
On the challenges facing the ministry, she said, “Most of the challenges have to do with adequate funding. We talked especially about national press centre that is not working up to a level that we expected. We also talked about the federal information centres.
“You will recall that we have centres in every state of the federation that are not working optimally; we also brought that to the fore. The centres are one of the strengths of the ministry.
“We also talked about external publicity and the possibility of re-opening the federal information services abroad. We also talked to him about the nine parastatal that are under the ministry, the work they are doing and some of the challenges they face”.
On the re-opening of information centres, she said “At different fora, the President has said it, that he wants to improve the image of Nigeria and one of the ways we can do that is by the re-opening of these centres abroad, so he was all for it and he said that we will work together to ensure that we do that”.
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