Kwara Govt Media Workers Protest, Shut Down Stations

Workers of the three media houses owned by the Kwara State Government shut down their broadcasting and publishing protesting poor condition of service, low morale at work and government’s insensitivity to their plights.
The media houses include the agelong Radio Kwara, The Herald and the Kwara State Television Service (KWTV)‎.
The protesting workers among who was a Reverend Father who is a staff started their actions at the premises of Radio Kwara where they moved to the Television station located about ten kilometers away.
They moved to put off both the power sources as well as the transmitters of the stations, while the workers of the Herald newspaper, which has operated in fits and starts for seven years, simply stayed off their premises‎ and joined their colleagues at the broadcasting stations.
This reporter gathered that aside irregular payment of salaries to these workers, government has not been releasing the conventional running costs to the stations as and when due.
According to sources, the runnning costs were N5.5m, N3.5m and N2.5m monthly to Radio Kwara, The Herald and KWTV. Even then, the organisations have not seen the allocations in recent times.
The workers who spoke on the condition of anonymity  to this reporter demanded the immediate removal of the Sole Administrator of the three outfits, Dr. Muyideen Akorede.
Akorede‎ also doubles as the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Media and Communications.
They accused him of undue interference into the professional running of the media houses.
In his reaction, Akorede said that “the economic challenges in the country had affected government obligation on operational expenses.”
He however disclosed that a sum of N5 million has been released to three media houses, namely Herald N1 million, KWTV N1.5 million and Radio Kwara N2.5million.
Akorede dispelled speculations that the state government, at his instance, was planning to sell the media houses to private hands.
“The plan, however, is to migrate the AM station to FM station because of modern technology. When you buy a phone today, you get only FM stations. More so, the media houses were set up by law and anything that will be done there has to be through House of Assembly”, he said.