Nigerians have taken to social media to criticise Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed over his plans to borrow $500m to raise the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) to the standard of Cable News Network (CNN).
The minister, who spoke during an appearance before the Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Loans to defend the loan the ministry applied for from President Muhammadu Buhari’s $29.96 billion loan for funding infrastructure in the country.
According to him, the NTA has the “manpower and the technology” but the only thing left was to digitise the network.
Mohammed said the creative industry was not just about television but also about film, music, fashion and photography, and that the industry employs over one million young persons directly and indirectly.
Reacting to the statement, Nigerians express their surprise at the decision, why others queried the decision to spend such an amount on the digitization of a TV station.
See reactions below: