Everyone knows that this feed is my CNN, La Liga, NTA, BBC, Guardian and New York Times. I use it to tell the best people on earth who come here to support a village boy. Through the feed, we share stories of our companies, customers and partners. Sometimes, if you buy something from my company, in my excitement, I do come here to THANK you and ask more to emulate your good service to the world!
But this my strategy could be at risk. Why? Nigeria has a new rule explained by the information minister, Lai Mohammed: “Let’s assume you have brought in La Liga, and during the matches, Guinness is advertised, we will compel you, we will compel Guinness to also advertise when we are playing a local league. That is the only way we can grow this industry but as can be expected, we have had very few supporters.”
“If you do an advert in South Africa, you put it on CNN and we look at that advert and we see that the advert was not made in Nigeria but actually made in South Africa, or you see that five times a day, it is on CNN, you pay half a million to us. The half a million will go to the Content Development Fund.”
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Mr. Minister, do not fine me. It is a free market, I have the right to reach my “La Liga”, “CNN”, etc in the best way I can. Nigeria should not be regulating where companies think they need to put their messages when we cannot regulate which foreign hospitals politicians go for medical check-ups! Yes, local content should also apply to local medical treatments.
Lai Mohammed revealed that it is in line with the amended broadcasting codes that adverts of products that are meant for Nigerian audience must be aired in Nigeria.
“What is common today is to see products made in Nigeria but the advert for those products are actually probably done in South Africa or in the US. So, we amended the code to say that if a product you want to advertise in Nigeria territory is made in Nigeria, grown in Nigeria or processed in Nigeria, then you must make sure that the advert is also produced in Nigeria.
“We are not stopping you from making your production in America or South Africa but if you are going to advertise in Nigerian territory, you will pay a fine of N100,000. “In other words, if Gulder makes an advert in South Africa and it is shown on NTA, if it shows it 10 times a day, it will pay N100,000 fine 10 times.” “We went further to say that if a company should invest $1m in bringing EPL to Nigeria, that company must also be ready to spend 30 per cent of that $1m in producing a local content along the same line.
“In other words, if Maltina or Guinness decides to bring in EPL, which is English football, we have no problem with that. But they must also invest in covering our local league to the tune of 30 per cent of what he has paid,” the minister said. Lai Mohammed bemoans the manipulative tendencies of foreign companies which said is responsible for the lack of growth in the Nigeria Broadcast industry.
“The NBC has issued about 30 pay-TV licences but only one is managing to survive. Why? Because of these anti-competitive and manipulative tendencies of these foreign companies,” he said.
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These creatures are always in a hurry to advertise their ignorance, someone needs to remind Lai Mohammed that Nigeria is not a communist state, it’s still hovering around capitalism and free market, so his dumb illustrations are pitiful. He studied law, later became the mouthpiece of APC, now his expertise has sprawled from content creation to sports development. Kai, what won’t we see or hear from these guys? And they keep sounding as though they are making sense.
You want to tell private citizens how and where to spend money, their private money, yet you are dumb to suggest how not to waste public money. The same people that voted $500 million to turn NTA and co into a digital angel. He didn’t wait for Nigerians to grow the capability to source the components and build the stations 100% locally. We can easily send public dollars to the Chinese, but then tax private citizens for getting value for money.
Sorry, you cannot unionise everything, because the adverse effect of this nonsense is lack of competition and quality delivery. Who cares to work hard if you already know that free money is coming? Nigerians can compete, those paying also know how to pay for value; we simply don’t want ignorant people to interfere.
Lai M. does not understand free market economics, he does not understand globalisation, he hardly understands anything outside APC concepts. pele sir.