NBC denies banning select Nigerian music videos

The recent clampdown by the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation on select music videos for containing offensive materials has continued to generate varied reactions weeks after the alleged ban was affected; with the affected artistes- Psquare, Wande Coal, Timaya, Flavour, D’prince, Chuddy K and Tilaman- condemning the action.

The NBC has however denied banning the broadcast of some musical videos by Nigerian artistes.

In a statement made available to PREMIUM TIMES, Maimuna Jimada, the Acting Public Relations Officer of the Commission, said the commission was not aware of the ban and was not in charge of banning musical videos.

“NBC has not banned any videos as we are not in-charge of placing a ban on music videos. We are solely responsible for ensuring that musical videos and audios made for public consumption were safe. If a music video or audio has content that is not suitable for broadcast we tag these videos and audio as ‘not to be put on air. Also we inform stations across the country not to broadcast them,” she said.

Mrs. Jimada also said that if a video is tagged as not to be aired, its producers could still reproduce them with better content for broadcast.

Corroborating the commission’s stance, Yunusa Tanko, the Deputy Director and Head of Corporate Affairs, National Films and Video Censors Board, said the board was unaware of such ban. He said although the board was in-charge of censoring the content of musical video, artistes failed to bring their works to the board for proper check before broadcast.

“Since the videos were produced for broadcast, it was also the duty of NBC to monitor their contents. The board has collaboration with NBC and the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) in matters of copyright, piracy and censorship. Most times these issues could fall under any of our jurisdiction because our functions overlap.NBC has the mandate to regulate content and music videos are supposed to be classified.

“Though piracy is supposed to be handled by the copyright commission, the censors’ board works to ensure that all content that passes through the board are classified,” he explained.

As the controversial ban lingers, one of the affected artistes, Tilaman has called for dialogue between the NBC and stakeholders in the entertainment sector.

In a video posted on YouTube, the artiste said he had to react to the ban after realizing that most of his fans are not happy about the ban. He called for the establishment of a screening board where artistes can have their videos screened before it goes into the market or aired on television stations. This he said will help both parties avoid incessant incidents of video ban.