Why NTA still depends on subvention despite making more money than private stations — Ex-DG

A former Director-General of the Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), Dr. Joe Abah, has disclosed the reason why the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) still depends on subvention from the Federal Government despite making more money than private stations.

The internationally recognised expert in governance and institutional reforms said this in a tweet on his X handle on Sunday.

Abah, who was the DG of the BPSR between 2013 and 2017, said this was because NTA had several outstations it had to service and redundant staff on its payroll.

He said he once did an analysis of the funding of NTA for the Economic Management Team (EMT) during the regime of late President Muhammadu Buhari.

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He tweeted: “When I was in government, I analysed NTA funding for the Economic Management Team and realised that they make more money than all the commercial TV stations put together.

“I couldn’t understand why we still give them budgetary provision, especially since the Oronsaye Report said that we should stop funding them from 2013.”

Abah said the question that popped up then was: “Where does their money go?”He provided the answer: “The commercial stations don’t have stations in all 36 states.

“NTA claims that it is to promote ‘national unity’.“In many countries, CNN is one person with a laptop, a camera and a microphone.

“Can you imagine CNN having full-fledged stations in every country of the world and in every state of every country? “And those stations staffed by hundreds of people in each station, many of whom don’t bother to turn up for work?”

Abah said his reason for joining X, then known as Twitter, as a government official was that he realised it was cheaper to advertise on CNN than NTA.So he thus decided to engage with the people via X without paying anyone.

e tweeted further: “Oh, by the way, the reason I joined Twitter as a government official then was that I realised that it was cheaper to advertise on CNN than NTA at that time. “I decided to join Twitter to engage directly with the public without needing to pay anybody.”

Responding to the tweet by Dr. Abah, an X user: Julius J. Adebayo, said it was a shame that despite the subvention of the NTA, it still had a studio that isn’t presentable.

Adebayo, who added a photograph of the studio, wrote: “Dear @NTANewsNow, this cannot be your studio in 2026. “Your budget for 2025 was ₦18,306,572,988.“This is completely unacceptable. “We can do better.”