The Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) has stated that it could not broadcast the 13th anniversary of the American University of Nigeria (AUN) because of technical issues. The NTA had been paid to broadcast the event live.
The Atiku Media Office had earlier said that the Presidency instructed the NTA not to broadcast the event. AUN is owned by Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, who is the PDP presidential candidate for the 2019 election.
The NTA said that it had mobilised its outside broadcast (OB) crew from Jos to Yola to broadcast the event. The OB crew got to the venue on time and carried out uplink and downlink tests which showed that everything was in good working order. However, 3 hours before the start of the event, the domestic satellite station (DOMSAT) at NTA headquarters called to say that they were not receiving signals from Yola. The OB crew at Yola were sending out signals, but the signals were not being received by NTA’s DOMSAT station in Abuja.
NTA investigation showed that the fault was from the NTA’s satellite service provider, INTELSAT. A report of the problem has been sent to INTELSAT.
It should be noted that the NTA transmitted the AUN event after the problem was overcome.