The Director General of National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Mallam Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, has assured that President Muhammadu Buhari who watched Nigeria Vs. Cameroon World Cup qualifier on a foreign Pay TV in his home town, Daura, katsina State, will be entertained by digital visuals from Nigerian stations on Set Top Box (STB) that will be powered by Digital Switch Over (DSO) of the federal government during the 2018 World Cup fiesta in Russia.
Speaking in a telephone interview on why President Buhari was watching Nigeria match from a foreign Pay TV on Tuesday, he told Business Hilights that NBC is currently fast tracking DSO on a regional basis and Kaduna was chosen in the North Central in the first phase.
According to him, “We choose six states per geo-political zone. Kaduna is the state in the North Central chosen first. As soon as we finish that set of states, we will be looking at which other state that should be chosen and we might be in Katsina in the second phase for strategic reasons.
“With what we observed during the last match in Cameroon, we may be looking at Katsina as that may bring a lot of publicity so that our president will be able to watch such matches on our own STBs.
Continuing, the NBC boss averred that “The fact that you are stating it to me now it’s making sense and we might just put Katsina as part of the next set of states”.
“By the time we finish the current six states that are ready for switch over, in the next set of states, we will look into Katsina so that when the president goes home and is watching matches, he can watch it on our box.
Kawu however, assured that with the speed NBC is using, “By the grace of God, Nigerians and Mr. President will watch 2018 World Cup live on our boxes from anywhere in Nigeria”.
It would be recalled that several pictures of where President Buhari was calmly watching the World Cup encounter between Nigeria and Cameroon had went viral immediately after the crunchy cracker which ended one all draw in Yaoundé, the Cameroonian capital on Monday.