The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), charged with overseeing Nigeria’s mass media, ranked last in a recent assessment of information accessibility among 40 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
The ranking was revealed in the 2024 Half Year Transparency and Efficiency Compliance Report published by the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) on Wednesday.
Covering the commission’s activities between January and June, this report showed that the NBC scored a total of 0% — an abysmal rating no other agency could match.
According to the ranking criteria, NBC failed to meet its responsibility of sharing comprehensive information with the public regarding its charges, timelines, terms, and requirements for obtaining permits, licences and approvals.
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The PEBEC report compared how accessible information about the NBC was in its offices, physical facilities, websites and service portals. The results branded the commission as entirely non-transparent and largely inaccessible to the public and the organisations it serves.
Under the National Broadcasting Commission Act of 2004, NBC is legally required to issue licences to media outlets, enforce broadcast standards, and create policies for media practice in Nigeria. The commission is also tasked with promoting Nigerian indigenous cultures and moral values through broadcasting.
However, NBC’s failure to make critical information accessible not only contravenes its mandate but also hinders media organisations from operating within the regulatory framework. The media cannot comply with policies and laws if they can’t even access them.
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To assess the full extent of NBC’s transparency failure, FIJ visited the commission’s website, as listed on its official X page. The result, not-so-suprisingly, mirrored PEBEC’s assessment.
As of press time, NBC’s website was inaccessible, displaying raw code that only software engineers could decipher. To make matters worse, the site’s security certificate had expired.
Result on the NBC website
This inaccessibility contravenes the National Information Technology Development Agency’s (NITDA) guidelines for state-owned websites.
For example, Section 7.3.1 of the NITDA guidelines mandates that all government websites must be available for 24 hours, seven days of the week.
The section even outlines the technical hosting, security, and domain requirements necessary to ensure continuous operation. Yet, NBC’s website remains down, broken and inaccessible to the public.
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The commission also violates the Business Facilitation Act of 2022, which requires all government agencies to publish comprehensive lists of products, services and requirements.
The Act charges all agencies to ensure that these pieces of information are available at all times. With NBC’s website down, and the commission deemed inaccessible, it is failing to comply with these legal obligations.
The post REPORT: NBC, Nigeria’s Information Regulatory Agency, Scores 0% on Accessibility —The Worst of 40 MDAs appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.