Senate directs DSTV, others to reduce bouquet prices; threatens action

The Nigeria Senate has directed all pay-tv service providers in the country to immediately review their bouquet prices downward.

A committee has also been inaugurated at the upper chamber plenary on Wednesday to investigate their subscription fees.

The Senate’s directive followed a resolution of the upper legislative chamber after a motion sponsored by Senator Abba Moro (Benue South).

Moving his motion, Mr Moro argued that the new fees are exploitative and were announced without consideration for the economic hardship subscribers are going through.

“Nigerians are demanding that, rather than paying fixed rates for packages monthly, pay-tv service providers should introduce a subscription model which allows subscribers pay per-view to enable them to match their TV consumption to subscription as it is with the case of electricity metering and mobile telephony,” Moro said.

Senate president Ahmad Lawan alleged that Multichoice, the operators of DSTV and GOTV in Nigeria, are deliberately exploiting their subscribers.

“What DStv is doing here, they can’t do in many countries,” Mr Lawan asserted. “But here they do it and get away with it. So we need to have a public hearing. Our ad-hoc committee should be given the mandate to do a whole scale investigation.”

Last week, MultiChoice announced increment on DSTV and GOtv subscription fees with effect from April 1, while blaming the decision on inflation and business operations costs in Nigeria.

“In light of the rising costs of inflation and business operations, we have had to review the price of our packages to keep delighting our customers with great entertainment, anytime and anywhere,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Senate urged the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, and the Nigerian Communications Commission to direct all pay-tv providers to introduce a pay-per-view model of subscription against the month to month prepaid model presently in place.

Members of the Senate committee include Aliyu Sabi Abdullahi as Chairman, Sulaiman Abdu Kwari, Oluremi Tinubu, Yusuf A. Yusuf, Lekan Mustapha, Chukwuka Utazi and Akon Eyakenyi.

The committee was given one month to report back to the Senate and if their investigation shows Nigerians have been unnecessarily exploited, the service providers should be ready to make refunds to subscribers.