Nigeria’s Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, has said that the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) will compete with the likes of Cable News Network (CNN) if the $500 million loan his ministry is seeking for is approved.

The honourable Minister stated this when he appeared before the senate committee on local and foreign loans to speak on the importance of the $500 million which is part of the $30 billion loan President Buhari is asking the national assembly to approve.

The Minister explained that if the fund was approved, the NTA could be upgraded to enable it to send out signals that would be at par with CNN, adding that Nigeria has the manpower to achieve this feat

“If this project is approved, there will be more visibility for our people in the music, fashion and film industries. In 2014, we mfr $23 million from music alone and about $53 million in 2019 and we are looking forward to making $83 million in 2025.

“You can imagine the kind of growth we will have if only we digitize all NTA stations in the country,” he said.

According to Mohammed, the creativity industry is a major employer of the youth.

He stated that “Apart from agriculture, which is the largest employer of labour in Nigeria, especially the youths, the next largest employer of labour is the creative industry.”

He decried how Nigeria and other countries on the sub-Saharan region, have not been able to meet the deadline set by the International Telecommunication Union in 2006, directing all its members to migrate from analogue to digital communication.

In his words: “We were unable to meet the deadline along side most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the deadline was a later to moved to 2017, which was not reliable and today, the target is June, 17, 2020,” the minister concluded.