The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed and heads of agencies under the ministry, on Wednesday, defended their 2017 budget proposals with an appeal for better funding.
The minister made the appeal when he appeared before the budget defence session of the House of Representatives Committee on Information, National Orientation, Ethics and Values to present over N7.9 billion 2017 proposal.
Mohammed said keying into the new information technology age was becoming challenging.
The minister explained that there were plans by Federal Government to launch another pilot scheme of digitisation switchover project soon.
He expressed optimism that the Federal Government was determined to implement projects appropriated in the 2017 budget.
The committee Chairman, Rep. Olusegun Odebunmi, said the committee would do all within its legislative powers to appropriate funds to enhance productivity in media industry.
He stressed the need for collaboration by stakeholders and for Public Private Partnership to achieve the desired goal in the sector.
A member of the committee, Rep. Sani Zorro (APC-Jigawa), said that the challenges of information management were enormous.
He said there was need to reap off the information budget to help the ministry and agencies with better and higher proposals that would sustain the activities of the media.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that 10 media organisation have so far defended their 2017 budget proposals. (NAN)