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MRA Hold
Stakeholders Meeting On The Nigerian Media Bill
Lagos, Tuesday, January 23, 2001:
Media Rights Agenda will hold a Stakeholders Meeting on the Nigerian Media
Bill at Rockview Hotel in Abuja on January 24 to 27, 2001.
The purpose of the meeting is to finalize
the text of a draft Nigerian Media Bill to be presented to the National
Assembly thereafter for enactment into law as the Nigerian Media Act.
The participants at the meeting will be
drawn from among representatives of government institutions and agencies,
which are relevant to the media and the legal process, the National
Assembly, professional bodies within the media, the legal profession,
media regulatory agencies, human rights non-governmental organizations,
and media practitioners drawn from the print and broadcast media, as well
as from state-owned and private media establishments.
Previous consultative meetings on the reform
of media laws in Nigeria have been held in March 1999 and, most recently,
in October 2000, when Media Rights Agenda organized two technical
workshops to review the text of the first drafts of the Nigerian
Broadcasting Bill and the Nigerian Press Bill. These two Bills have now
been consolidated.
The upcoming Stakeholders Meeting is
intended to provide an opportunity for participants to discuss in detail
the draft Nigerian Media Bill, in the light of the modifications made to
the first draft of the Nigerian Press Bill and the Nigerian Broadcasting
Bill, in accordance with the agreements reached at the earlier
consultative meetings organized to discuss those documents.
The meeting will also give stakeholders an
opportunity to review the revised draft to ensure that the modifications
made are in consonance with the decisions reached by participants at the
two earlier technical workshops and that the contents of the draft Bill
are acceptable to stakeholders in the industry. Where necessary, they may
propose further modifications to the text of the draft Bill.
The meeting is being organized with support
from the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) of the United States
Agency for International Development (USAID).
Contact:
Maxwell Kadiri
Tel. & Fax: 01-4930831
E-mail: mra@mediarightsagenda.org
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