Rural councils and community radios

Rural councils or councils in the rural areas have generally been described as giants with clay feet given their potentials to produce but their inability to grow rich. The cry has always been centered on making their voices heard and being adequately compensated for their efforts.

The talk around today is making somebody know their problems, exploiting their strengths and making good use of their opportunities. On this premise, rural councils of late have fallen in love with community radios with little studies on the highs and lows of its management and sustainable functioning.

As a tool for mass communication, community radios or radios in general are big instruments for mass propaganda and information out-reach. Their effect ranges from education through entertainment to information. They are meant to build a better society, if properly managed, and can also be a source of conflict if misused and abused.

The place of community radios in rural communities can not be undermined. They are supposed to play a vital role in the developmental drive of the community and sell the merits of the people through their culture and other endowments.

In a fast-advancing world of globalization and a global village, community radios are called upon to serve as agents for good governance where the people are in permanent touch with their authorities and the policies governing government’s actions.

It also has the arduous task to advance the process of democracy and defend human rights from callous officials and above all prepare a giant package for effective management of the local realities with those in authority being called to order and asked to sit up.

As community radios managed by the rural councils, the radios are, by necessity, supposed to champion the vision of the mayors and act as a feed-back mechanism between the people and their governors. Their programs must be tuned to touch the local realities in a language that cuts across religious and tribal boundaries and the personnel must have some degree of fine training that makes them suitable for the job not parrots reciting chorus of the mayor’s songs.

MANAGEMENT Councils in the rural areas are rural irrespective of the appellation we decorate them with. Their problems though surmountable are enormous ranging from revenue collection to the mindset of the local population. On the revenue angle, most council in the rural areas do not generate internal revenue of up to 30% of their budget and are usually hooked to FEICOM loans which amount to about 70% – 80% of their earnings. The people see no reason to pay taxes or a toll for anything for the mentality is that ‘the government will do it all’.

Under these circumstances, one wonders how the radio will survive when the marketing department is non-existent and how the radio will be funded. On a comparative note, private or community radios based in urban and city centers with some of them harboring small and active commercial/ marketing teams have hardly found enough money to equip, maintain and finance their stations let alone break even. It begs the question on what more of these hastily, unplanned, unequipped and poorly manned rural radio stations which have all been reduced as relics in most of the rural municipalities?

The urge for community radio stations within rural councils seems to be new phenomenons that even the proponents can not explain least talk of understand. The radio stations have been created without due studies; technical, socio-economic and physiological. These studies could have helped the mayors to understand the feasibility or not of such a venture. The few council-created radios that have so far existed like the Bakassi Community Radio in Isangele, Ekondo-titi Community Radio etc have hardly survived their first year of existence.

Analysts and watchers in the rural councils/community radio saga are already expressing concerns that these community radios created by mayors have come to function as the mouth piece of the respective mayors. Another fear is rife that where these radios will survive, there will easily become propaganda weapons for incumbent mayors against their political rivals.

From the legal stand-point, another worrying element is that most of the council-created radio stations are functioning in illegality since many of them are neither known by the competent quarters nor have successfully complied with the usually tedious process of acquiring license from MINCOM. It might be early and pessimistic to draw a conclusion on the new found love between rural council and community radios but the long and short of the story still remains. It is a love bound to fail and grow sour?