The Federal Government has paid all debts owed to service providers under the Digital Switch Over (DSO) project, Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said on Tuesday in Abuja.
He made the declaration at the 26th edition of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s Administration Scorecard Series (2015-2023).
The DSO is the globally-endorsed process of transition from analogue to digital broadcasting.
Presenting the scorecard of the ministry, Mohammed recalled that after Nigeria had missed the deadline for the DSO a number of times, the Buhari administration re-launched the whole digital transition process.
He said the re-launch resulted in the pilot launch of the DSO in Jos in April 2016 and subsequent roll out in Abuja, Kwara, Kaduna, Enugu, Osun, Lagos and Kano states.
The minister also recalled that following a stall in the DSO process the Federal Government resolved that for the transition to be sustainable it should be a private-sector-driven exercise.
According to him, the DSO must be self-sustaining and there will be no more subsidies either on Set Top Boxes or on signal carriage.
He said the ministry, therefore, pledged to work with the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning and the Federal Executive Council to secure funds to pay the outstanding debts
The minister said also that reforms embarked upon at the National Broadcasting Commission were in line with government’s drive to provide job opportunities for Nigerians.
He said amendments made to the National Broadcast Code were aimed at encouraging the development and growth of local content in the broadcast industry.
Mohammed stressed that the Buhari administration had succeeded in making ground-breaking reforms in Nigeria’s advertising and marketing communications industry.
Mohammed also declared that the biggest achievement of his Ministry in the area of Culture and Tourism “is the repatriation of hundreds of looted artefacts”.
“During the period under review, efforts to repatriate artefacts looted from Nigeria – which we launched Nov. 28th 2019 – paid off handsomely, with a total of 1,130 Benin Bronzes heading home from Germany alone.
“The legal transfer of the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria of all the 1,130 Benin Bronzes in all German public museums was signed on July 7, 2022.
“The physical return has since commenced with the first batch accompanied to Nigeria in December, 2022 by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Culture of Germany and an entourage of 80 top government and museums officials.
“Nigeria is currently in the forefront of global efforts on repatriation of antiquities to their countries of origin,”.
Mohammed said his ministry also succeeded in repatriating a 600-year-old Ife Terracotta from the Netherlands in October 2020.
He added that Benin Bronzes were also repatriated from the University of Aberdeen and Jesus College of the University of Cambridge as well as the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the United States (U.S.).
He said the Horniman Museums and Gardens in London also in October, 2022 signed the legal transfer of 72 Benin Bronzes.
Mohammed said his ministry was at advanced stage of securing the repatriation of hundreds of antiquities from the Pitt Rivers Museum of the University of Oxford; the Ashmolean Museum of the University of Oxford.
He said hundreds of antiquities were also to be repatriated from the Museum of
Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Cambridge; Glasgow
City Council in Scotland and National Museums of Scotland.
The minister disclosed that the Federal Government had begun the expansion of the National Museum, Benin City, to house some of the antiquities.
He added that the government was working on developing a Royal Benin Museum.
