New Helmsmen At Federal Information MDAs: Not A Tea Party for Ndace, Ali Ali, et al

A few days ago, the federal government, through a press release announced sweeping changes in the leadership of the nation’s federal public service information systems.

These federal news organizations include the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the Voice of Nigeria (VON), the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), the Nigerian Press Council (NPC), The National Orientation Agency (NOA), National Broadcast Commission (NBC) and the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN) among others under the Federal Ministry of Information.

Mr. Jibrin Ndace as DG of the VON, replacing Osita Okechukwu, Mr. Lanre Issa-Onilu was appointed  Director-General of the NOA, while Mr Salihu Dembos retained his office as DG of NTA, Dr. Muhammed Bulama as DG FRCN, replacing Dr Mansir Liman, Mr. Charles Ebuebu replaces Balarabe Illelah as Director-General of the NBC.  The President also appointed Dr Lekan Fadolapo as the Director-General of ARCON, Mr. Ali Ali as DG NAN, and Mr. Dili Ezughah as Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Press Council.

For these leadership appointees to appreciate the gravity of their assignment, it is imperative to interrogate the enthronement of corporate governance in their operations and learn from the best practices in other nations whose public broadcasters are success stories of impacting positively on the citizenry through the commitment and ingenuity of their governors, directors, and managers.

INSTRUMENTS OF GOVERNANCE

As Managing Directors, Directors-General, or any other nomenclature, they must operate within the powers that the act or laws which constitute their Boards of Directors allow them.

First, they must understand the role of the Board of Directors. Their role is to protect public, corporate, or shareholder interests. This is the motive or instrumentality of the corporate governance mechanism.

Corporate Governance is about transparency and accountability in an organization’s operations and decision-making process.

It guarantees stability and sustainability and instills discipline, adherence to principles, and commitment to best practices among its leadership and management. It provides the framework for measuring and strengthening the performance of all operatives.

In this instance, the board and its members of the Director-General or Managing Director a prime or key member, become the custodians or the guardians of the corporation.

As its soul, although not usually visible, these men and women who constitute the board are always carefully chosen to ensure that only people of integrity who can give direction or who epitomize the vision and mission of the corporation are brought on board.

Approximating the essence of the corporation to which they are appointed, they serve as the strategic lever of control on the board of management, which are the executive managers responsible for the day-to-day management of the operations of the corporation.

Corporate Governance is to ensure that the visible executives, especially the Directors-General and their management teams do not miss their path while they are busy with the difficult task of running the corporation’s affairs.

The board of governors or directors is the perfect instrument for monitoring and evaluating corporate performance. Not being full-time appointees but coming from different backgrounds with varied experiences and representing diverse interests, they periodically meet to evaluate the progress of the corporation and set its policies and direction for implementation or execution by the board of management. They ensure that the executive managers stay faithful or are in fidelity to the corporation’s ideals, vision, and mission.

State, national, or international broadcasters fall into the category of public institutions that must have robust corporate governance mechanisms or structure to ensure certain altruistic deliverables that will justify their public essence or public service institution. These values are comprehensively highlighted in, Public Service Broadcasting: A Best Practices Sourcebook, a 2005 seminal publication of the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC), edited by Dr. Indrajit Banerjee and Kalinga Seneviratne.

The deliverables or values include editorial independence, universality, distinctiveness, diversity, unbiased information, education/enlightenment, knowledge, social cohesion, citizenship, accountability, and credibility. Of course, these values of cultural integration, national orientation, patriotism, voice for the minority, respect for diversity and inclusiveness, social and political mobilization, and stimulation of economic productivity and development through their broadcast contents are strategic.

It is therefore the function of the Board of Directors of broadcasters to ensure that the operational managers do not derail in their processes and content and are not frivolous in the utilization of state or public resources that are appropriated to them.

So, what is the character of the board of directors of public broadcasters and the personality of members that must perform this onerous task of providing leadership and vision for the corporations they are appointed?

The appointment of the board and the visionary function of its members are guided by charters or acts establishing the corporation and upon which board and management performance in terms of the public value they deliver or how they meet audience expectations are measured.

It is in the quality of men and women that are tapped, whether by direct appointment based on individual merit following a rigorous and competitive recruitment process or by emergence through election at an annual general meeting or even validation of presidential appointment by the parliament. In a nutshell, the consideration for board appointment into a public service broadcaster or media is based on diversity, public interest, experience, professionalism and expertise, intellect, influence, and integrity.

This is all the gist of board appointment and corporate governance and those who get appointed to the board of a public service broadcast are to represent public interest, prevent abuse, and protect public trust as contained in the broadcasting mandates of the corporation.

Global Best Practices 

In the UNESCO publication, Banerjee and Seneviratne acknowledged that structures governing PSB vary considerably between nations. Their reference to the composition of the BBC Board of Governors is quite revealing and exemplary:

In the United Kingdom, the BBC has been constituted as a largely autonomous legal entity with a Board of Governors appointed under the Royal Prerogative by the Prime Minister of the day. The Governors are drawn from persons who have distinguished themselves in industry, public service, the arts, and so on. Care is taken to ensure that those appointed reflect the increasingly diverse nature of the British Population. The Royal Charter requires one Governor to be appointed from each of the countries constituting the United Kingdom, viz. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

The Director-General is appointed by the Board of Governors and is, in practice, allowed complete freedom over programming and editorial matters. Governors have a fixed five-year term, unless they resign earlier, or are removed after being declared bankrupt, after acquiring interests that conflict with their duties as Governors, suffer from a mental disorder, or absent themselves from meetings for longer than three months without prior consent. Governors may also be removed by Royal Prerogative, though this power has hardly ever been used.

Somehow, Nigeria draws extensively from the UK practice which for instance is reflected in how the board of Voice of Nigeria is composed. The act establishing Voice of Nigeria stipulated relatively similar criteria for membership and composition of the corporation as follows:

The Corporation shall consist of the following members to be appointed by the President, on the recommendation of the Minister, that is-

1. Chairman;
2. The Director-General of the Corporation;
3. One representative of the Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation;
4. One representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs;
5. One person to represent interest not otherwise represented on the Corporation;
6. One person with the requisite knowledge in Nigerian Art and Culture and;
7. Three persons with requisite experience in
   1. the mass media;
   2. Financial matters; and
   3. engineering

In interrogating the new appointments into the leadership of these Nigerian public media, one finds on the part of the government, a sensitivity to corporate governance.

Funding options and sustainability plans

Today, Nigerian public broadcasting managers are under pressure for funding and sustainability, intense competition from operators of commercial and private radio and television channels just as the globalization of mass media is encouraging the powerful foreign channels to undermine the acceptability of the local public media.

So, it cannot be a tea party for the new helmsmen of the identified Nigerian public service broadcasters who have to draw from their wide experiences to cope with the dynamism and challenges of a sector whose performance cannot be measured by a clear economic bottom line but the extent to which they produce public value qualitatively in galvanizing pride of identity and national cohesion among Nigerians or inspiring respect and prestige for the country, promoting her authentic values in the larger international community or serving as a soft power asset to push the Nigerian and African viewpoint.

The question every stakeholder and observer could be asking is what new, remarkable things these new appointees would be able to bring to revolutionize the operations of the media corporations. What value-added will they be offering to change public perception of public and state broadcasters as a drain pipe and ineffective institutions?

It is a test of their capacity and capabilities to think outside the box in confronting the dominance of foreign broadcasters that have penetrated our cultural domain and the powerful commercial broadcasters that are profit-driven, mindless of our context and peculiarities as Africans or Nigerians.

Therefore, the success of members of these appointees will depend on their understanding of the vision and mission of the national public service broadcasters to which they are to superintend, their structure and system, the services they provide, and the challenges they contend with.

They must also understand the global best practices in public broadcasting, tap into the experiences of other national broadcasters, and establish linkages and partnerships with their peers abroad.

Public Service Broadcasting brings to any nation intrinsic public value, not necessarily the bottom line of cents and dollars because of the nature of the free-riding public goods and services they provide although its board and management must devise ways and means of generating income outside the envelopes from the government.

More significantly, members leaders, and management of these public broadcasters must appreciate the significance of corporate governance for corporate success or attainment of corporate vision.

The board is not a battleground of private, competing, and pecuniary interests but a forum for aggregating the best ideas, offering solutions, and charting a clear path for the broadcaster in the interest of the nation through the radio and television services their stations provide under their charge as an executive or non-executive directors.

Hopefully, they will make a tremendous impact on the fortunes of these national broadcasters by the quality of their engagements with relevant stakeholders within and outside government. Hopefully, too, they will leverage opportunities offered by membership of the Public Media Alliance {PMA), formerly the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA), one institution that exists for strategic leaders and managers of public broadcasters to share knowledge and experiences as peers in the broadcasting industry.

This is the primary platform they must immediately link up with to lead them into the world of Public Broadcasters operating on strong corporate governance tradition. Many Nigerian public broadcasters are already members of this alliance.

 

AbdulWarees Solanke is Deputy Director/Head, Strategic Planning & Corporate Development Department, Voice of Nigeria, Ikoyi, Lagos; korewarith@yahoo.com,                                                                 08090585723