The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) last week filed a motion at a Federal High Court in Abuja asking the court to set aside its May 10, 2023 judgment in which it, among other things, issued an order of perpetual injunction restraining the Commission from further imposing fines on radio and television stations.
The NBC, through its lawyer, Mr Babatunde Ogala (SAN), claimed that the court lacked the jurisdiction to render the verdict and that it arrived at the decision in ignorance of the relevant facts.
The judgment arose from a suit instituted by Abuja-based lawyer, Mr Noah Ajare, on behalf of Media Rights Agenda (MRA), challenging the powers of the NBC to fine broadcasters, following a March 1, 2019 announcement by the then Director General of the Commission, Mallam Ishaq Kawu, that it had imposed a fine of N500, 000 each on 45 broadcast stations for alleged contraventions of the Nigeria Broadcasting Code.
In his judgment delivered on May 10, 2023, Justice James Omotosho ruled that fines are imposed on a person found guilty of a criminal offence and that in Nigeria, only courts of law are empowered to impose sanctions for criminal offences.
In setting aside the fines, Omotosho held that the NBC was “neither a court nor a judicial tribunal to make pronouncements on the guilt of broadcast stations notwithstanding what the NBC Code says,” adding that the Commission’s action violated the Constitution.
But contrary to the finding of the judge in his judgment that the NBC “was served with the Originating Summons on 24th February, 2022 and served with several hearing notices but failed to file any process,” the Commission alleged that the originating summons in the suit, which led to the judgment, was not served on it.
It also claimed that the MRA had “two un-appealed, subsisting and binding decisions of the Federal High Court on the same issues and parties” and that rather than appeal those decisions, it brought a fresh suit, setting the court on a collision course with decisions of the other Federal High Court in the same complex.
The NBC cited in support of its claim a suit filed by MRA in 2021 against the NBC in which the organisation challenged the constitutionality and legality of the Commission’s action on May 27, 2020 in imposing fines of N250, 000 on Breeze FM radio, based in Lafia, Nazarawa State; N500,000 on Adaba FM radio in Akure, Ondo State; and N250,000 on Albarka FM radio in Ilorin, Kwara State. Justice Obiora Atuegwu Egwuatu delivered judgment on March 2, 2023, dismissing the suit.
