NBC denies ban on musical videos of P-Square,Wande Coal,Timaya ,others

The Nigerian Broadcast Commission (NBC) on Monday denied banning the broadcast of on some musical videos by Nigerian artistes.

Mrs Maimuna Jimada, the Acting Public Relations Officer of the Commission, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja that the commission was not aware of the ban.

She said NBC was not in charge of banning musical videos, adding: “NBC has not banned any videos as we are not in-charge of placing a ban on music videos.”

Some newspapers had reported that the commission had banned some new musical videos from being broadcast in the country.

The report named some of the affected artistes as P-square, Wande Coal, Timaya, Flavour, D’prince, Goldie, Chuddy K and Tillaman.

The report said the videos were banned for containing offensive materials.

Jimada said NBC was 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.

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

Commenting on the matter, Mr 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.

He explained that 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.