Sulemana Braimah, the Executive Director of the Media Foundation for West Africa, has laid some blame for the Nana Agradaa fiasco at the feet of the National Communications Authority.
This is as part of what he described as a “confusing regulatory framework.”
Speaking on The Point of View on Citi TV, Mr. Braimah said Ghana’s confusing media regulation has played a part in situations that culminated in Nana Agradaa, a self-styled spiritualist turned self-styled evangelist, announcing a money-doubling scheme on TV that defrauded congregants.
Mr. Braimah stressed that “without their [NCA’s] actions, all these stations we are talking about cannot exist.”
The NCA has authorised almost 700 radio frequencies and over 140 TV stations.
But the National Media Commission, which regulates content on authorised media outlets, is not resourced for effective monitoring.
“We have the NCA that is supposed to authorise frequencies…but they don’t care about content. In fact, they don’t even have the power to deal with content issues.”
“The NMC doesn’t even have its own premises not to talk about the capacity to be able to monitor all these television and radio stations we are talking about,” Mr. Braimah noted in contrast.
Nana Agradaa has been remanded into police custody after she was arrested last Sunday.
She is facing seven counts of defrauding by false pretense and charlatanic advertisements on TV and in a newspaper to lure her victims
