A joint protest session carried out by three rights group, People Against Corruption and Injustice (PACI), Human and Consumer Rights Advocacy Centre (HCRAC) and Campaign Against Impunity and Domestic Violence (CAIDV) in Abeokuta, Ogun State capital has called for sanctions against the alleged dubious business strategy of leading Pay TV companies including DStv, GOtv and Startimes.
They argued that the services rendered by cable networks in the country are exploitation and corruptive in nature against the wish and choice of Nigerians, decrying that while DStv had refused to do what it does in South Africa which is Pay-per-view, Startimes have kept on polluting Nigerian culture and viewers with free Chinese TV stations which are useless.
While decrying the high cost of their subscriptions, PACI coordinator, Bankole Solomon accused the government of not doing enough to compel the cable TV operators to operate on pay-per-view basis.
The rights groups also noted that all their petitions to relevant government agencies on the matter had not be attended to, thus alleging compromise on the side of the government.
Addressing journalists after their peaceful demonstration, Solomon averred that “We are here to register our anger and discomfort of what is happening in the system. We are protesting against the bad policies of cable networks. The DStv, GOtv and Startimes are exploiting us. As we speak, our families are not at home, yet, the card is reading. Even when there is no signal or rain falls or the decoder gets spoilt, the subscription is running”.
“They cannot continue to exploit us. We have been to South Africa and other European countries where they do pay-per-view. You pay for what you watch. We are saying enough is enough. We are also saying that all the local stations should be free on these cable network and not Chinese stations that we don’t understand. So we are here to register our anger that enough is enough for this exploitation. They cannot continually limit our own local station in promoting their stations. They are exploiting us.
“We have written to the NCC but they are not ready to listen to us. We have written to them and what they said is that they are working on it and yet our money is going down daily. We are saying enough is enough and we are protesting. We are going to court to seek court injunction on it. We are suing NCC and all cable networks in Nigeria,” the three groups unanimously stated.
