The Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, FRCN hai called for partnership with the Cross River State government to relaunch its subsidiary, Canaan City FM in Calabar back on the airwaves.
The Zonal Director, FRCN, South South, Mr Lucky Obarien, who is representing the Director General of FRCN Dr Mohammed Bulama at the twentieth edition of carnival Calabar, made this call during a courtesy visit to the state commissioner for information in Calabar.
With more than forty radio stations operating on FM, medium wave, and shortwave frequencies, spread across six transmission zones including Enugu, Ibadan, Kaduna, Lafia, Maiduguri, and Port Harcourt, and two operational centers in Abuja and Lagos.
providing national coverage and reaching remote areas, as well as offering Local content in programming, with an estimated listenership of one hundred million per time, radio Nigeria prides itself as the largest radio network in Africa.
However, In response to the yearnings of the public to connect with the broadcast network, Canaan City FM was launched in 2014 as a subsidiary of FRCN to, among other functions, bridge the information gap on national issues in the state.
After several years of successful terrestrial broadcasting, the broadcast outlet seized transmission arising from technical issues.
Speaking during the visit, the Director General FRCN Dr Mohammed Bulama, who was represented by the zonal Director, South South, Mr Lucky Obarien, said although spirited efforts have been made to restore the FM station on the airwaves, there were still a few challenges here and there.
” Canaan City FM has been having issues, to the extent that on August 2023, the station went completely off air. Since then, we have been making spirited efforts to restore it. I’m happy to announce to you that these efforts are beginning to yield positive results as we have been able to return to the airwaves. What we are doing now is that, we are fine-tuning our signals to determine our reach and a few other things.”
He maintained that besides information dissemination, fostering transparency and good governance, benefits of having a functional federal radio, was the hiring of lower cadre workforce from grade one to six reserved for indigene in line with civil service regulations, much as it attracts taxpaying public to the state.
I’m representing my Director General with these kind words that if the state government can assist us to fix the station and help us restore full broadcasting, it will be in the best interest of the State. First majority of the staff are indegene of the State. Besides, the employment of lower cadre manpower is exclusively reserved for indigenes.
The state commissioner for information Dr Erasmus Ekpang who described the outfit as the most credible source of information to the public, said it was also the most dependable in the delivery of information to the grassroots.
“Right from when I was a little boy, I was listening to the morning news in the country through FRCN. It’s the most dependable and viable source of disseminating information to the public , especially at the grassroots. The transformation of news in other local languages makes it have greater grassroots appeal. So will have to support you to come back to air. The governor senator Bassey Otu is doing so much in the state and sometimes I feel very bad that the information is not getting to the people at that level. So if we have your back to full broadcasting it will do us a world of good in the state “
He expressed confidence that the state Governor Senator Bassey Otu will be willing to provide the necessary support to enable it perform uptimally.
