Nigeria's Mass Communication Policy-Conceptual Pitfalls And The Problem of Implementation

ABSTRACT

This study is a critical analysis of Nigeria's Mass Communication Policy . It examines why, two decades after it was enunciated, not much has been achieved in terms of advancing the frontiers of mass communication in the country to meet the basic minimum standard of the United Nation's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to which Nigeria belongs. The study seeks to prove that there were some conceptual errors in the formulation of the policy, which, ab initio, consigned it to failure. What are these conceptual errors? How have they affected the implementation of the policy? How has the failure in implementing the policy affected Nigeria's developmental efforts? How can the conceptual errors be corrected and by so doing, put the implementation process back on track? These are the questions the study would seek to answer. The research has relied heavily on documentary sources on the subject, which can be found at the Ministries of Information and National Orientation, Culture and Tourism, the National Planning Commission and the National Archives. The Nigerian Television Authority, Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Voice of Nigeria and the News Agency of Nigeria, all Federal establishments, which are supposed to be flagships in the implementation of the policy. More importantly, papers delivered at the Badagry seminar, which led to the formulation of the policy, were examined. Additional information has also been sourced through questionnaires sent to officials charged with the responsibility of formulating/implementing the policy and the general public. This study is therefore a contribution in refocusing Nigeria's effort at fashioning a comprehensive, realistic and an implimentable mass communication policy . It is hoped that this work would bring out the deficiencies in Nigeria's mass communication policy and possibly serve as the basis for its revision.