Matilda Omonaiye/
The attention of the National Broadcasting Commission has been drawn to alleged sharp practices in the dealings of StarTimes, a Chinese electronics and media company offering digital terrestrial television and satellite television services to consumers in Nigeria.
In a petition sent to the Director-General, National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Mallam ls’haq Modibo Kawu, the Metropolitan Broadcasting Services Limited (MBS) highlighted what it describes as the difficulties and humiliations that it has been suffering in operating its license “due to the extortionist, unprofessional and inhuman trial-treatments from the NBC licensed channel aggregates especially StarTimes”.
Detailing the anomalies, MBS stated: “We are a Direct Satellite Broadcasting (DSB) License, holder. With the DSB license, we established Impact Africa Television (IATV) which started test transmission on August 1, 2018, on Channel 18: on the StarTimes bouquet and was formally launched by the then Executive Governor of Oyo State, His Excellency, Abiola Ajimobi on November 1, 2018.
“We entered into an agreement to pay, by instalments N28, 000, 000 (Twenty Eight Million Naira). The payment schedule was reviewed on 4th April 2019 by which we agreed to N5, 000, 000 (Five Million Naira) each on April 10, June and August 13, 2019.
“To our surprise on June 17, we got an Addendum reviewing our contract unilaterally to N40, 000, 000 (Forty Million Naira) with effect from June 13. We called and finally got the Director in charge, Mr Joshua Wang to agree to a discussion. The meeting was scheduled for Tuesday 13th August. Unfortunately, 12th and 13th August were declared as a public holiday by the Federal Government.
“I sent a message to Mr Joshua Wang asking him if we can reschedule our meeting to 20th August. He responded in affirmative.
“By the afternoon of Wednesday 14th August, we started receiving complaints from our viewers that we are off the air. We were later told that StarTimes had yanked us off the air. All entreaties to StarTimes to restore our signals have been ignored in an attempt to force on us an Addendum seeking to unilaterally modify a material clause in such a way that will seriously impair our business or take undue advantage of us.
“The uncaring and sharp practice of StarTimes started from inception. They shifted goalposts several times even before we were finally put on their bouquet but didn’t stop there. We have a regional transmission contract covering Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ekiti and Kwara states, but for over a week in August 2018 our signals were not received in Kwara, Ekiti, Ondo and Osun, all we got was an apology.
“It is most unfortunate that we were licensed and left unprotected at the mercy of this organization that has little or no respect for the sanctity of contract nor for Nigerians in general.”
The petitioners requested that the NBC should, as a regulatory body, rescue them from the extortionist tendencies of StarTimes and ensure that MBS is able to operate its license.
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