Nigeria to Implement Community Radio

 Photo Above: Pacesetter FM 103.5 building. *Pacesetter FM is a commercial station which is located in Amakama, Umuahia, Abia State.

AMARC welcomes community radio breakthrough in Nigeria.

Montreal, October 19th, 2010. The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) today welcomed the decision of the Federal Government of Nigeria to give the go-ahead for community radio in Nigeria.

In a speech at the opening of the Africast 2010 conference in Abuja, President Goodluck Jonathan announced that the Federal Executive Council had approved guidelines proposed for community radio licensing by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), the Nigerian broadcasting regulator.

The President stated further that government had devolved to NBC, the power to consider and issue the licenses without recourse to the presidency, once the applicant meets the legal conditions.

The move is a crucial breakthrough for Nigeria’s Community Radio Coalition, which has been campaigning for such a move for several years since Nigeria returned to multi-party democracy.

Steve Buckley, AMARC International President said:

"We greatly welcome the announcement by President Goodluck Jonathan confirming approval of proposals from the National Broadcasting Commission to proceed with community radio licensing in Nigeria. We especially applaud the delegation of licence assessment and decision making to the regulatory body as another important step in democratising Nigerian media law and regulation."
Oumar Seck Ndiaye, AMARC Africa President, added:

“We congratulate the President and the Government of Nigeria for taking this bold step towards the development of community broadcasting, along side private and state broadcasting, to ensure the access of all people of Nigeria to information and communication, consistent with recommendations of the African Charter on Broadcasting which has been endorsed by African governments.”
For more information:

World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters
705, rue Bourget, bureau 100

Montreal, Quebec H4C 2M6 Canada
secgen (@) si.amarc.org

Phone: +1 514 982 0351
Fax: +1 514 849 7129

http://www.amarc.org

Florida Symposium to Discuss Nollywood Films

Nigerian films are the world's third biggest film industry.

One Day Symposium at the University of Florida, Ritz Union
Nigeria as a Center of Discourse: 
Re-centering a Marginal Nation-State
organized by Kole Oluwatoyin Ade-Odutola,
Lecturer, University of Florida
Friday October 1st
Program of event 9:00 to 12:45pm
(1). Arrival of Guests 9:00 to 9:30am
(2). Opening formalities and Welcome Addresses
(2.1) The Chair of LLC
(2.2) The sponsors…Center for Humanities and Center for Cultural studies
(3). Introduction of speakers/ Chairman’s opening remarks
1st Session….Nigeria in text and in context
(4) Organisation of a Modern Nigeria using indigenous wisdom by Adewale Ajadi
(5) “The Many and Changing Faces of Ogun: The Yoruba God of Iron in Florida.” …Prof.Robin Poynor
(6) Knowing Nigeria through music…Professor Bender
(7) Knowing Nigeria through creative writers…STILL OPEN
(8). 50 Years of Nigerian Literature….by Professor Ken Harrow (Kenneth W. Harrow Distinguished Professor of English, Michigan State University)
(9). Performance and presentation by Dr. Rachel Hastings
(10). Questions and responses
(11). Lunch Break 1:00pm to 2:30pm
Afternoon   Nollywood: What it is and what it is not
(12). Introduction of speakers/ Chairman’s opening remarks
(12.1) The Chair of the session
(12.2). Introduction of speakers
(13). "Religious and Surrealistic constructions in Nollywood: NEED A PRESENTER
(14). "Nollywood: A Cinema In Search Of Itself."...NEED A NEW TOPIC AND PRESENTER
3:30pm to 4:30pm (Professor L. White introduces Dr. Ambler) (Speaker sponsored by the Center for African Studies)
(15). “The Movies in Nigeria from Hollywood to Nollywood.”..Dr. Ambler
(16). Screening of 'Green Passport' (30mins)
(17) Reception at Grinter Hall (Sponsored by the Center for African studies)
After the reception…
3rd session Politics and representation (6:30pm to 9pm)
(18). Chairperson’s brief remarks
(19). (Middle Belt: People, politics,[Nigerian Middle-belt Region: The Third Force in Nigerian Politics.]…Professor Tunga Lergo
(20). Brief spoken word Performance by Dr. Rachel Hastings
(21). Screening of Professor Su O’Brien’s Documentary (65mins)
(22). Questions and responses
(23). Closing remarks
Reception

Storytellers: Nigerian Sidewalk Video

Are Nigerian video stories examples of "community media" ? Are these films just low budget attempts to mimic Hollywood and Bollywood? How have their grass roots distribution networks impacted media consumption in West Africa? This exhibition in Berlin is an assessment of some of the more interesting films that this prolific movement has produced.
-DeeDee Halleck

Shown at "the building"
, Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14a

10249 Berlin DE
, T: 030 28 04 79 73Saturday, March 28th 2009, 2- 6 PM

Storytellers: an afternoon screening of Nollywood films
The Nigerian video-film industry started with a guerrilla attitude and grew over the past 15 years to be the third largest film industry worldwide, releasing more than 30 films per week. Strongly linked to daily West African life and told from a native point of view, Nollywood reaches its audience with stories of common concern, such as love, faith and betrayal.

The introduction of affordable recording techniques promoted the rise of an industry whose medium was to become a mean of expression for future filmmakers. They distribute their movies in VHS and DVD to reach a large audience via sidewalks and local markets.

The technical advancement provides not only a voice to many filmmakers. The democratization of movie making also allows for a much shorter production time that enables them to respond faster to reality's development. Certain political events have turned into films only two weeks after taking place, fictionalizing reality by filling the gaps of missing information with personal or collective narratives.

Apart from the appearance of some Nollywood films at international festivals, this genre remains an African phenomenon - widely accessible and influential in Africa, with its own modi of circulation and distribution, but hardly to be found at international rental stores.

Looped program on several screens:

"What I want" (Consorts International Ltd.)
"Our days on earth" (JBM Merchandise)
"Congo Marriage" (Samlex Electronics Co. Ltd.)
"Congo Marriage 2" (Samlex Electronics Co. Ltd.)
"Miss Nigeria" (Ossy Affason Video)
"Miss Nigeria 2" (Ossy Affason Video)
"Wounded Land 2" (Ayo Industries Nig. Ltd.)
"Jealous Mind" (Okayson Electronics Ltd.)
"Love, Sex & Marriage" (Ulzee Nig. Ltd.)
"Not my man" (P. Collins and Associates Ltd.)
"2 Hell with u" (Morning Star Production)


Selected by Clara Meister with special thanks to Uli Seifert

*******************
POEM BY NIGERIAN POET, KOLE ADE-ODUTOLA
Nollywound: Unwritten plot

The screen comes alive
No action
Just takes,
all fakes in a thousand re-takes
New Slate, same place
Our eyes are bruised by Nollywood.
We carry a plaster over a Nollywound
of pain and senseless fragments
of unending stories.
The sequels just like a nation’s transitions in slow painful motions.

The screen claims a life
and a strident voice
in the wilderness promises laurels
for this unwritten plot
hindered by troubling writer’s block.
Stories like nations with power blocs
hoping to gain attention.

The screen sells a lie
and a nation once again
pregnant from the
remnant seeds of
recalcitrant political mothers
willing at all times to throw
thighs apart for
itinerant political fathers
who aborted pregnancies of yester-years.

The screen buys our gaze
as the belly of a nation
is swollen
but the birth-chord
is stolen even before birth.
Mid-wives are still in morality training school taking lessons before their test.
The political maternity ward
is under construction
and supervision of cash and carry consultants.

The screen fades to black
and viewers are back for posers
How shall we deliver a test-tube baby:
Who already speaks from mother’s womb
talking of wounds past,
passing codes from Swiss accounts
to sweet accounts buried beyond
talons of transparency accountants.

The screen brings them back
and the lost fish for posers:
How shall we deliver a test-tube baby:
Who already counts the days
when voters with buttered breads
will cast their curses and cause
the usual heart wound that issues
like Nollywood windy movies.

© Kole Ade Odutola

Four US documentary filmmakers Arrested in Niger Delta

Sandy Cioffi in Seattle
Four documentary filmmakers from the US and a Nigerian citizen have been arrested by the Nigerian military in the Niger Delta. The Seattle-based crew has been detained since Saturday. The film crew was finishing work on the documentary Sweet Crude. Arrested were director Sandy Cioffi and crew members Tammi Sims, Cliff Worsham and Sean Porter, as well as Joel Bisina, founder of the Niger Delta Professionals for Development. Sandy Cioffi appeared on Democracy Now! in 2006 to discuss the situation in the Niger Delta and the role women played in protesting multinational oil corporations.

Sandy Cioffi: “And those women were demanding fairly basic things, like jobs, some remediation of the environment, water, electricity, healthcare, basic infrastructure that you would expect, that if you have $38 billion annually of revenue going to your government, that you would have, and they have none of those things. In fact, they have quite the opposite. They have their livelihood taken away from them.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on Nigeria to immediately release Sandy Cioffi and the four other members of her crew and to end what it described as a pattern of censorship of the conflict over oil in the region.

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/4/15/headlines

Filmmaker Florian Opitz facing 14 years of prison in Nigeria

from:http://annalist.noblogs.org/post/2007/10/05/florian-opitz-facing-14-years-of-prison-in-nigeriaFlorian Opitz was arrested in Nigeria by the Nigerian State Security Service (SSS) and has to appear in court today. He is accused of 'endangering national security' and faces up to 14 years in prison. Florian Opitz is a freelance documentary filmmaker, author and journalist. His last very successful documentary "The Big Sell-Out"is a political film. In various episodes the abstract phenomenon of privatisation is depicted in stories about very concrete human destinies around the globe. The documentary tells tragic, tragicomic but also encouraging stories of the everyday life of people, who day by day have to deal with the effects of privatisation politics, dictated by anonymous international financial institutions in Washington D.C. and Geneva, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO)."

Arrested with him were filmmaker Andy Lehmann (Berlin), Danjuma Saidu (Nigeria) and Judith Asuni (US/Nigeria), doing research in the Niger delta for their next film. They were alledgedly taking pictures of oil refineries, pipelines and ships. The Niger Delta has seen many bloody conflicts about resources, oil revenue and distribution of wealth, often depicted as 'ethnic conflicts' by neighbouring tribes. Judith Asuni has lived in the region for 36 years and works with the peace work NGO
Academic Associates/PeaceWorks. http://www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org/en/node/18

The Niger Delta moved in the focus of attention with the trial against Ken Saro-Wiwa, author, television producer, and environmentalist who received the Right Livelihood Award in 1994 and was nominated for the Peace Nobel Price in 1996. He was executed in 1995. The German Journalist Association demands all four arrested to be released and calls the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs to intervene. http://www.djv.de/SingleNews.20.0.html?&tx_ttnews[tt_news]
=1093&tx_ttnews[backPid]=18

Florian Opitz has screened 'The Big Sell Out' during the last Globale film festival in May in Berlin together with Andrej Holm, leading to a public debate about privatisation. http://www.globale-filmfestival.org/en/node/9 Before he left to Nigeria he left us his card and said "Call me if there is anything I can do to help from from there." It's up to us now to help
free him.

Niger Radio Station Head Taken to Prison

Niger: Moussa Kaka Taken to Niamey Prison Without Explanation Reporters sans Frontières (Paris) PRESS RELEASE 25 September 2007Reporters Without Borders today condemned the transfer of radio station head Moussa Kaka to Niamey prison after a prolonged period in custody without being taken before the prosecutor or being given any explanation, as demanded under law. Kaka, of privately-owned Radio Saraouniya, and correspondent in Niger for Radio France Internationale (RFI) and Reporters Without Borders, was moved to prison on 24 September, four days after his arrest."It is astonishingly lax to arrest one of the country's most prominent journalists without producing any serious proof and flouting the law. In such a serious case, it is beyond belief that the Nigerian authorities should show such contempt. It gives legitimate reason to question the credibility of the procedure which led to Moussa Kama being sent to prison," the worldwide press freedom organisation said. The journalist was held in custody for a four-day period which expired at 6pm on 24 September without ever being formally charged.

The only indication of what the journalist is accused of came from the prosecutor general of the Niamey appeal court, Adama Harouna, who said on 21 September that he faced proceedings for "violating state security", because of his alleged links with the Tuareg rebellion of the Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ). His lawyer, Mr Coulibaly said that he should be taken before the prosecutor's office during 25 September.

In a statement released yesterday, RFI voiced its "very serious concern about the fate of our correspondent". "In the absence of precise facts setting out the details of the accusations against our correspondent, RFI questions the exact reasons which led the authorities in Niger to arrest and then imprison a journalist, well known for his professionalism and independence," it said.

Reporters Without Borders defends imprisoned journalists and press freedom throughout the world. It has nine national sections (Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland). It has representatives in Bangkok, London, New York, Tokyo and Washington. And it has more than 120 correspondents worldwide.

RELEASE!!
Niger journalists free - for now

Niamey - Police in Niger have released two journalists held for allegedly defaming the country's finance minister but they still face prosecution, a press association said on Friday.

"They have been freed but the prosecutor has notified them that legal procedures will follow their normal course," Boubacar Diallo of the Association of Independent Press Editors told AFP.

Soumana Maiga, founder of the biweekly L'Enqueteur, was detained Wednesday, while Ibrahim Souley, the publication's director, was briefly detained last Thursday before being held again for questioning five days later.

L'Enqueteur published a series of articles last month that included allegations that Finance Minister Ali Lamine Zeine had been involved in embezzlement and favouritism in ministry appointments.

Two other journalists are also being held in Niger.

Moussa Kaka, Radio France Internationale's correspondent in the country, has been detained since September 26, while Ibrahim Manzo Diallo, director of the biweekly Air-Info, has been held since October 9.

They face charges over alleged links to a Tuareg rebel group active in the country's north.

Prosecutors at Agadez, in the north of the country, questioned Manzo Diallo for the first time on Friday, grilling him for three hours in the presence of his lawyer Moussa Coulibaly, who also represents Kaka.

Participatory Communication by Alfonso Gumucio

Photos from a Theater Project in Nigeria to encourage innoculation against polio.
Most rural and urban communities in the Third World do not have a voice. The globalisation of communications during the last decades has imposed over the world not only biased information but also a daily culture that very often is in conflict with local traditions. The communities that have resisted to changes that may annihilate their moral and ethical values have based their strength in their own culture. But many were not strong enough to resist, so they have disappeared as cultures. They only remain as people, added to the margins of the globalised economy. Communication has a very important role to play in defending and promoting cultural identity. In my work I have always kept in mind that communication is tool for participation and organization. Only organized communities, that use communication to strengthen their traditions and to preserve a live memory of their past, can face the challenge of resisting to a uniform and globalised world. I have supported communities to build their own communication systems in several countries, using all possible communication tools, from community radio to popular theatre. I have used film to support the organizational activities of workers in Nicaragua and peasants in Bolivia, rural theatre to promote immunization in Nigeria, audiocassettes to help networking among rural communities in México. Each concrete situation has brought me to develop different communication responses, strategies and tools.From a report on theater for health initiatives:The advantages of popular theatre in Nigeria is that it can be built on existing ritual manifestations, taking advantage of local culture to communicate new messages of benefit for the community. Gumucio (2001) reported that the important and immediate impact of the popular activities resulted from marrying the dramatic performance with service delivery. For cultural reasons, many women in Nigeria did not immunize their children. However, after Jimmy Solanke's performance of The Postman Calls, nurses had to deal with hundreds of women and their children of all ages lining up to get their immunization shots or drops. This had a double benefit: on one hand it created greater awareness among the people in the villages; on the other hand it ensured that the health staff from the local government would go out to the villages on a regular basis, which they were often reluctant to do. **********************************************************
This is Alfonso's contribution to a "chat" about folk culture and development from The Communication Initiative:
In my understanding, folk media is closer to communication than mass media. And there is a simple reason for that: mass media deals with one-way information, whereas community media and folk media deal with two-way communication. We shouldn’t even be specifying that communication is a two-way process, but many still don’t get it. From the Greek and the Latin origins of the word itself, “communication” means sharing and participation, the same as dialogue. Communication that doesn’t involve dialogue and participation is just information. Why do we have two words, “information” and “communication” if people keep using them randomly, as if they were the same? Maybe some do not really like the word “folk” because it relates to “folklore”, which, as we all know is a devaluated and frozen-in-time form of cultural expression. However, the word “folk” means “people”, and we need to rescue it from any distortion in its use. In Spanish we use “popular theatre” or “popular communication” to refer to it, however in English “popular” has become a synonym of popularity, in a frivolous sense. Folk communication (as I prefer to call it, rather than “folk media”) has been around for many years as a tool for development. Brazilian Luiz Beltrao wrote several books about it in the early 1960s and explained in detail its relevance to development. It doesn’t include just popular or street theatre, it also relates to other forms of local cultural expressions, including songs, drums, poetry, puppets, dance, and a wealth of other creative expressions. Durgadas arguments are more than convincing about it, so I won’t repeat.

I’ve personally supported community theatre in programmes in Nigeria, Haiti and Papua New Guinea, in isolated localities in those countries where mass media had no reach or impact at all. It they had reach, their impact was null because it didn’t speak the language and the local culture.

This is precisely why folk communication is so relevant in development, because it interacts with local culture, in the language and themes that are important to the communities. While mass media “campaigns” are aiming larger “publics” with very general messages, folk and community based communication is addressing issues in specific ways and is doing it through local engagement and participation. And we know already that only participation in development leads to ownership of the programmes. You don’t get communities to have ownership by bombarding them with mass media messages. Information does not contribute to sustainability, communication does.

One important issue rose in my own experience with folk media and community theatre: the question of continuity. Communication, as a process, has to be sustainable and sustained. If we want sustainable social change and development, then we also need sustainable communication. In Nigeria we had trained one local theatre group in each Local Government (46 by the time I left) so they could go around the 300 communities within the geographical area covered by the Local Government. I was so enthusiastic about it that I wrote a book: “Popular Theatre” (1995).

The above is to say that folk media has to be a permanent exercise, not just once in a while. It has no impact if performances and activities are conducted once a week, or once a month. It has to be a regular communication activity, built into education, culture and social development. Impact of folk media can only be noticeable if experiences are multiplied by hundreds. Message to development agencies: spend less in your own visibility through mass media and think about development that can be sustainable through participatory communication, including folk media. --Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron