Africa Independent Television

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Africa Independent Television is a Nigerian satellite television station, available throughout Africa, and via GlobeCast World TV to North America. Some of its programming is also available in the United Kingdom through BEN Television.

[edit] Censorship

On May 14, 2006, in the midst of the controversy over the so-called "Third Term Agenda", plainclothes policemen from the State Security Service raided the Abuja offices of Daar Communications, Ltd. (owner of AIT and Ray Power FM), the Founder and Chief Executive High Chief Dr Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi was however not on sit. The SSS ordered the broadcasters to immediately cease broadcasting a 30-minute documentary which traced failed attempts by previous Nigerian heads of state (including the present president) to lengthen their tenures in the Office of President, and confiscated the master tape of the documentary.

[edit] Sedition charges

Exactly one month later, on June 14, SSS operatives raided the studios again and arrested Gbenga Aruleba, host of the popular "Focus on Nigeria" program. It is believed that he was arrested because of an interview which he had handled with former Senator Joseph Waku on his program the previous night; Waku had harshly chastised the Obasanjo administration over the Third Term Agenda and other issues during the interview. The operatives also demanded the master tape of the interview, but it couldn't be given to them by the Abuja offices as the recording for the broadcast was done in Lagos. He was later released, then re-arrested along with Rotimi Durojaiye (aviation correspondent for the Daily Independent, who had written a report on June 12 on the questionable manner in which Obasanjo had acquired a new presidential jet, and then later criticized the president over it on his own radio talk show) on apparently trumped-up charges of sedition. They were eventually granted bail on June 29 by the Federal Supreme Court, which had ruled that sedition was a colonial-era offence which had little validity in present-day Nigeria.