The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has filed a lawsuit against President Muhammadu Buhari and the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) for using the NBC Act and broadcasting code to sanction, threaten, and shut down broadcast stations in Nigeria for their coverage of this year’s general elections.
Lai Mohammed, the Minister of Communication and Culture, has joined the claim as a defendant.
The NBC allegedly sanctioned 25 broadcast stations and issued ‘final warnings’ to 16 others last week for allegedly breaking rules of the Nigeria Broadcasting Code during the Feb. 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections.
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SERAP asked the Federal High Court in Lagos last Friday to determine “whether the broadcasting code used by the NBC to censure some broadcast stations and threaten to shut down others is contradictory and incompatible with freedom of expression, access to information, and media freedom.”
“An order of interim injunction restraining President Buhari, the NBC, and Mohammed from threatening and sanctioning broadcast stations in Nigeria simply for carrying out their constitutional duties, pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice filed contemporaneously in this suit,” the organization says.
Kolawole Oluwadare, Valentina Adegoke, and Adelanke Aremo, the organization’s lawyers, filed the complaint on its behalf.
However, a date for the hearing of the suit is yet to be fixed.
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