FG moves to block illegal radio broadcast by Boko Haram, militants

The Federal Government will now deploy all the four International Radio Monitoring Stations (IRMS) across the country to block “illegal radio broadcast” by Boko Haram, the Niger Delta Avengers and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), the Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, has said.

The IRMS facilities are located in Azare in Bauchi State, Gusau in Zamfara State, Ipaja in Lagos State and Ogoja in Cross River State.

Shittu in a statement Wednesday by his media aide, Victor Oluwadamilare, said the FG is in the process of rehabilitating the moribund IRMS and would thereafter deploy it to counter any radio or internet broadcast capable of undermining the country’s national security.

He said IRMS are “strategically located in various parts of the country as security surveillance to monitor radio broadcast activities, so as to guide against illegal use of the radio frequency airspace for unauthorized broadcast by proscribed groups, political and ethnic motivated dissidents.”

He further said: “The Federal Ministry of Communications has adequately appropriated for rehabilitation works on the IRMS facilities across the country in the 2016 Federal Government budget and has consequently warned against any illegal occupation and acquisition of any fraction of land on which these infrastructures are located.”