Financial challenges that Nigerian broadcasting companies are facing could stall the country’s transition from analogue to digital broadcasting by 2015, stakeholders have warned.

The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has set June 2015 as the deadline for countries to switch from analogue to digital.

But speakers at the Digital Broadcasting Summit in Abuja have argued that most media houses in the country presently lack the financial capacity to embark on a seamless digital transition.

Speaking at the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) hosted summit, the chairman of the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON), Malam Abubakar Jijiwa, said that finance constraints and other challenges in the broadcast sector could make it impossible for some stations to meet Nigeria’s digital migration deadline of January 1, 2015.

Jijiwa said the challenges in the broadcasting sector were enormous and urged government to provide loans to the sector to ensure that no station, private or public, would be left behind during the switch-over.

“The challenges in the broadcasting sector are becoming more complex as we move closer to the switch-over date of 2015. We, therefore, want to call for a marshal plan to assist broadcast stations with the needed funds to achieve our goal of transitioning seamlessly by January 2015,” he said.

Jijiwa further said that all BON members were committed to the transition programme as outlined by government but would need a lot of support from stakeholders for such initiatives to succeed.

In his opening remarks, Emeka Mba, the director general of NBC, said the forum was to avail stakeholders the opportunity to discuss and assess the work done so far.

He said that despite the financial challenges faced by the broadcaster, the deadline is realistic and that NBC and other stakeholders are set to implement key aspects along the road map to the eventual switch- over to digital broadcasting.

Mba said areas slated for discussion included the mechanism for new content development, signal distribution and other key aspects of digital broadcasting.