Digital Switch-over: Stakeholders Insist on Resolving Pending Legal Issues

From John Shiklam in Kaduna

Concerned stakeholders in the Digital Switch Over (DSO) broadcast have said that unless pending issues in a suit before a Federal High Court in Abuja are addressed, the process may be frustrated.

Spokesman for the concerned stakeholders and chief executive of Pinnacle Communications Ltd, Chief Abel Danladi, in a statement in Kaduna, noted that recent comments by the minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed about DSO had also raised fresh concern among stakeholders.

Danladi observed that comments by the minister during a media briefing on the pilot roll-out of the DSO in Jos, Plateau state, have raised fresh concern about the possibility of resolving pending issues before the court.

The minister was quoted as saying “we have licensed Digital Signal Distributors and raked in about N1.8 billion from the licenses issued to three signal distributors”.

The minister’s comments, according to the statement, “have raised renewed concerns among DSO stakeholders about the possibility of resolving the pending dispute out of court as well as the accuracy of the figures quoted by the minister for the amount realised from licensing and the number of licensed signal distributors”.

Danladi stressed that the minister’s “comments has re-opened, rather than resolved the pending disputes which unfortunately means that the DSO roll out and hopes for meeting the June 2017 deadline must now await the outcome of the suit pending before the Federal High Court, Abuja”

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