The Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa says the National Media Commission (NMC) is currently not living up to its expectations. 

Sulemana Braimah said the Commission is currently powerless as its orders and directives are disregarded with impunity. 

According to him, the state agency currently does not have the required resources needed to execute its mandate effectively. 

Contributing to Joy Change-Speakers Series V on Saturday, July 8, Mr Braimah said the Commission has failed to live up to its responsibilities as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution. 

He thus called on government and persons responsible for ensuring the adequate resourcing of the agency to urgently do so. 

“Apart from the legal lacuna within the broadcasting space, there is also the problem of inefficiency and incapacity on the part of the National Media Commission (NMC), which is the media regulator.”

“Thirty years after its creation, the Commission has become powerless, under-resourced and moribund.”

“At the moment, one can safely argue that the NMC is hardly living up to its obligation of taking ‘all appropriate measures to ensure the establishment and maintenance of the highest journalistic standards in the mass media, including the investigation, mediation and settlement of complaints made against or by the press or other mass media,’ as required of it under Article 167(b) of the 1992 Constitution.”

“In fact, decisions of the Commission (the few times it does so) are now sometimes disregarded with impunity by media organisations and journalists against whom decisions are made.”