The Ondo State Governor, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, SAN, says those who bled to comatose the state-owned Television and Radio stations would not go unpunished.
Receiving the report of the Five-man Panel that looked into the Management of Ondo State Radiviosion Corporation (OSRC Tv and 96.5FM ) and Orange FM in the last four years, Governor Akeredolu said those found culpable to have mismanaged the funds and other resources of the stations would be interdicted.
The Governor who said professionally outlined contents matter a lot to listeners and viewers for the stations to make comparative impressions on their audience, urged it to desist from allowing political manipulations in their news and programme contents.
“The content must be good. The listeners don’t want to know if the stations are government owned, it has to be professional.
“It is not every issue that politics need be brought in. If we want these stations to perform and compete with other stations.
“This political interference, you can be assured that we will look at in our own time, it’s either we remove or reduce it,” the governor declared.
While thanking the Committee for their diligence despite pressures on them from different quarters, informed that there were no way, a responsible government could have tolerated the epileptic transmission of the stations beyond the time they were shut for the committee to work on ways to move the stations forward.
Earlier the Chairman of the Panel, Mr Kunle Adebayo had thanked the governor for the opportunity given them to serve the people of the state which they carried out conscientiously and dedicatedly.
Mr Adebayo said the panel identified six critical areas that made the stations to be unable to perform noting that among the nine stations in Ondo State, only the stations owned by State Government were sick and almost gasping for breath.
“In the course of our work, we found six critical areas which we think would help government make these stations competitive, responsive and productive like its peers allover Nigeria.
According to the Chairman, the problems confronting the stations include its recruitment policy and political interference.
“We also found out that the stations cannot compete, especially in terms of content (News and Programmes). They were unable to compete favourably with their contemporaries because there was serious human resource gap,, virtually all the staff of the stations need lots of trainings”
Also the Chairman said dearth of modern equipment was another problem.
“While carrying out this assignment, we went through the entire South West of Nigeria and engaged with the top management of each of the government owned stations and also inspected their facilities.
“We were concerned, that Ondo State Radio Vision Corporation, in terms of equipment, is not even on their radar at all.
Mr Adebayo also mentioned a high level of neglect, disenchantment in the use of government property.
“Elsewhere, we found out that the equipment in OSRC got broken down too frequently within an average of two years, whereas in other stations, some of their equipment were used for twenty years”, the Chairman added.
Equally, the committee discovered massive mismanagement occasioned by deliberate sabotage of government funds in the stations.
The Panel which was set up in March this year, shut two of the three state- owned stations, OSRC TV and 96.5 FM but kept running the Orange FM . It had Mr. Kunle Adebayo as Chairman; Mr. Tubosun Isijola, Secretary; Mr. Soji Alakuro, Mr. Steve Alabi and Mrs Ireti Ojekhua as members.
