Four years after Nigeria’s broadcast regulator punished television stations for reporting on banditry in Zamfara State, the courts have once again reminded public institutions that citizens have a constitutional right to know what is happening in their country.
Development Diaries reports that the Court of Appeal in Abuja yesterday struck out an appeal filed by the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) against an earlier Federal High Court judgment that declared unconstitutional the five million naira fines imposed on four broadcast stations for airing documentaries on insecurity in Zamfara State.
The decision is the latest setback in a legal battle that has stretched across four years and multiple courtrooms, raising concerns about governance, accountability, and the right of Nigerians to receive information about crises that directly affect their lives.
The Zamfara reports
The documentaries examined the worsening banditry crisis in Zamfara State, a conflict that had already displaced thousands of residents, disrupted livelihoods, and exposed persistent failures in the state’s response to insecurity.
Television stations, including Multichoice Nigeria Limited, TelCom Satellite Limited, Trust-TV Network Limited, and NTA Startimes Limited, aired documentaries examining the scale of the crisis and its impact on citizens.
Rather than focus public attention on the failures that allowed the violence to flourish, the NBC focused on the broadcasters.
What the courts ruled
Media Rights Agenda (MRA) challenged the fines in court in September 2022, arguing that the NBC lacked the legal authority to impose such penalties, with Justice James Omotosho ruling in May 2023 that fines imposed as punishment for alleged offences are sanctions that can only be imposed by courts of law.
In January 2024, Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia delivered another judgment, describing the fines as unlawful and unconstitutional and finding that they violated citizens’ rights to freedom of expression and access to information.
The Court of Appeal later dismissed one NBC challenge and, on 17 June, 2026, struck out another after finding that the Notice of Appeal filed by the Commission was fundamentally defective.
The practical outcome is that multiple courts have now reached the same conclusion that the NBC cannot punish broadcasters in the manner it attempted to do in the Zamfara case.
But the Zamfara case was more about whether citizens can be punished indirectly by restricting the flow of information they need to make decisions about their safety, communities, and country, especially as the documentaries focused on a public security crisis.
Citizens need that information
Many rural communities rely on radio and television as their primary source of information, as internet access remains limited or unreliable in many areas affected by insecurity.
Also, women living in conflict-affected communities often depend on broadcast media for information about security conditions, humanitarian assistance, school closures, and displacement patterns.
The same is true for elderly citizens, low-income households, and persons with disabilities who may have fewer alternative sources of information.
So, when broadcasters are discouraged from reporting difficult stories, these groups lose first. And the constitutional right to receive information exists precisely because citizens cannot hold institutions accountable for realities they are not allowed to see.
Accountability problem
The NBC’s legal defeat raises questions about how much public money was spent defending fines that courts repeatedly declared unlawful, why the commission continues to pursue appeals after multiple adverse judgments, what internal legal advice guided those decisions, and how a case of such significance reaches the Court of Appeal with a filing defect serious enough to render the appeal incompetent.
Those questions matter because the litigation was funded with public resources.
What should happen next?
The Court of Appeal’s ruling should be treated as an opportunity to review the regulatory framework that made the dispute possible, with the National Assembly examining the NBC’s sanctioning powers and determining whether they align with constitutional protections for freedom of expression and access to information.
The NBC itself should publicly explain how it intends to align future regulatory actions with the standards established by the courts, and the Federal Ministry of Information and National Orientation should also review the legal framework governing broadcast regulation to ensure that administrative agencies do not exercise powers that properly belong to the judiciary.
