The Federal Government will no longer fund the Digital Switch Over (DSO) programme, NewsSpecng has learnt.
This is as previous government inability to fund the programme has been blamed for the delay in the country’s migration from analogue to digital broadcasting.
Consequently, the country missed out on two windows 2012 and 2016 dates set by International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
The country last week announced 2022 date for rollout.
Though, it also announced that it will no longer fund the programme of after approving N9.4 billion for DSO.
Six states and FCT have already been hooked onto digital broadcasting.
Engr. Edward Amana, Chairman, Digiteam Nigeria however said the country has device strategy to fund the programme ahead of the new date.
The Digiteam was set up in 2012 to implement the digital rollout.
Amana told reporters that there was never any take off grant or budget allocation for the project.
He however said the new process will ensure that the project is self funding.
This, he said explained why the next phase of rollout will be in Lagos, Lagos, Kano and Rivers.
Amana said the success in the economic viable cities mentioned above will be replicated in the remaining cities.
He said, “As constituted right from the beginning, the Digiteam was meant to implement but the same government that set up the Digit team did not fund it to carry out its functions and as we speak.
“Digiteam is not funded to carry out those responsibilities. In-fact, as I speak, there has never been any budgetary allocation towards the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting.”
On the way forward, he said, “Therefore, the government would no longer need to pay them that money and we carry the same scenario to Kano, Rivers to Cross River and all other states that are in phase one.
“Now the strategy we have adopted is that moving out we are going to economically viable locations- Lagos, Port Harcourt, kano and then some of the other more economically viable states we take off from there.”
He explained further, “the way we are going is as soon as we roll out in Lagos for example and we are sure that there are enough Set-Top Boxes available on ground forth homes to buy, we will switch off the analogue transmitters, then the content owners would have no choice but to pay their indebtedness to signal distributors.
“The same situation would occur in Port-Harcourt and Kano. Fortunately all these locations have very flat land, it is not as challenging as Abuja and Jos where you have all sorts of hills and valleys and so on that you need to put on gap fillers to cover the population.”
“Once we roll out in Lagos within two to three weeks of switching on digitally in Lagos, we would be able to switch off all the analogue TV transmitters in Lagos. then the content owners will begin to pay the signal distributors,” he added.
Engineer Amana also assured Nigerians that the country is on course again.
“What we would do is keep pushing and now we are looking for a situation where to a great extent the system will be self-funding in brackets. Areas that need government support will be given,” he added.
He also crommended the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed who he described as the driving force towards actuactulisation the rollout.
“So, the fact is that at the inception of this regime when this particular government came into being, that any meaningful progress was achieved because it is the current minister of Information and Culture that actually spearheaded the take-off of the pilot project in Jos which happened before Abuja came on board and the subsequent rollout.
“So he has been the driving force in the actualization of the roll out that we are doing.
