The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has promised the restructuring and re-invention of government-owned media organisations in order to give them adequate grounds to compete favourably with other broadcasting agencies.
The Minister made this promise while receiving the National Executive Committee of the Radio, Television and Theatre Arts Workers Union (RATTAWU) in Abuja on Monday.
He said; “As long as we do not improve on the quality of NTA, and other public media, we cannot compete with others. We need to restructure, we need to reinvent NTA, FRCN and all our other publicly-owned media because that is the only way we can compete favourably with other broadcasting outfits”
He added that media organisations owned by the government need to be rebranded in order to provide entertaining and compelling contents that will put them in the fore front of viewers and advertisers interest. He reiterated his committed to fair play as he mentioned that no political opposition would be denied the access to public media organisation.
The Minister, on the commitment of the Federal government to diversification of the economy said; “Agriculture is one area where our diversification is going to be felt but what we have done is that we are not just talking about agriculture in the abstract. We are picking a few crops and a few items that we intend to be self-sufficient in and these items are today taking a large chunk of our foreign exchange. So in diversifying in agriculture, we are linking it to the entire economy,”
He also mentioned other sectors in the diversification plan which includes mainstream culture and tourism which he said organised and coordinated approach to are in the works.