A Visit to Unilag Fm

Unilag FM

Community radio as defined by Wikipedia is a “broadcasting service that offers third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial and public broadcasting. Community stations serve geographic communities and communities of interest.” They broadcast content that is popular and relevant to a local, specific audience which is often overlooked by commercial or mass-media broadcasters.

Community radio stations are operated, owned, and influenced by the communities they serve. They are generally nonprofit and provide a mechanism for enabling individuals, groups, and communities to tell their own stories, share experiences, become creators and contributors. A good example of community radio in Nigeria amongst others is University of Lagos FM Radio 103.1. A study visit to this station revealed that Unilag FM was established to primarily serve the university community.  

University of Lagos was granted license to run a community station in February 2002. The frequency of
103.1FM was assigned to the University in July 2003 and the station was officially commissioned on the 14th of December, 2004 by former Vice President of Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. Unilag Radio therefore became the first campus station to receive a license and the first campus station to go on
air in Nigeria. The FM station is currently headed by an acting coordinator, Mrs. Bisi King Paul.

Coverage/Audience

The station was originally designed to serve its immediate environment – the university, however, presently, it does not coverage does only serve entire Lagos state but also some part of Ogun State. According to the ag. Coordinator of the station, Mrs. Olabisi Paul-King, two factors made this possible: one is “Unilag FM broadcast to entire Lagos and part of Ogun State, because its antenna was mounted on top the School Senate building, which is obviously the tallest building on Campus. Another factor is the fact that the school is located in the water area, which makes the water waves to help the transmission to reach Epe, Badagry, Iyana Ipaja and other areas in Lagos and part of Ogun State.

Programme Structure

Unilag FM has two Studios: Live studio and production studio. The live studio takes care of live programmes, while the production studio is mainly to air recorded programmes.  Aside the studio, it has a newsroom, technical and commercial departments.

According to the News Editor, Mr. Ojatayo Takuro, the station airs news four times in a day, Monday to Friday and its news broadcast schedule are as follows: 10am, 12noon, 2pm and 5pm., adding that the station opens at 7am and closes by 12 midnight. He further explained that they have several programmes which cut across all disciplines be politics local and international, science, education , finance, music, such as best of jazz, sports, Sunday sermon, Friday jumat, etc.

Language

According to the studio production officer, Mr Segweni Odishika, “the station broadcast in English Language, except in some occasions whereby we deliberately use some local Nigeria languages for particular programmes. For instance, we have programme presented in Yoruba, Ibo, Edo, and Hausa. We invite experts on that particular language to the studio to discuss the issues bordering on that language. We also programmes presented in foreign languages such as French.

Personnel

Being a typical community radio station, it draws its staff strength from its immediate environment – the university community. Students of the institution form a major chunk of its staff, while employed staff includes three people in charge programmes, three studio managers and two technical officers.

Speaking further on this, the News Editor of the station, Mr. Tayo Takuro remarked that “Unilag FM was instituted to serve amongst other purposes as laboratory center to students of Mass Communications but has in recent time included students of English who handles some presentations while Electrical and Electronic Engineering students are involved in the technical services.  

 Funding

In responding to this, Mr. Paul-King said that the station is mainly funded by the University of Lagos authority. Though, it accept a few adverts but this is also censored so as to avoid political adverts, alcohol and tobacco ads, which may badly influence students.