IBA

It’s no surprise that Zambia’s top private TV station is closed. Prime TV is famous for calling out the evident corruption of the country’s leaders, airing news that the State run Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) deliberately doesn’t air and advocating for freedom of speech.

The Zambian government from almost inception has tried to close Prime TV especially that it comes out as an opposition run channel. If their own opposition channels are raking in more ratings than their State owned channel, they might as well want to play nice, jump on the band wagon and replicate what their competitors are doing. In short, win the people’s hearts.

So, despite failing at several attempts to close Prime TV, they kept at it and finally managed, but how did they do it?

Before we continue, we are basing our allegations off carefully scanned findings. WE STAND TO BE CORRECTED.

The world has been hit with a deadly pandemic (Covid-19) which is as experts predict, “only in its first wave”. This pandemic clearly is not discriminating as over 150 countries have been affected and people are dying in numbers by the second. Zambia is one of the countries affected. As it stands, it’s had ’39’ confirmed cases with only ‘1’ death and ‘3’ recoveries. We repeat! ’39’ confirmed cases with only ‘1’ death and ‘3’ recoveries. SMH.

Anyway, when Zambia first got hit, The government were on their toes pushing for the public to take precautions and help frustrate the Virus. It was mandatory. They did the same with companies. companies were told to sanitize their employees and clients as they entered the premises and encouraged a 2 meter distance between people. In the case of media companies, government ordered that their stations have Corona Virus airtime. Meaning constant sensitization. The catch though was that the airtime was to be paid for by the media companies themselves. I guess you could call that ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’. PRIME TV blatantly refused! As a result, Government immediately imposed sanctions on the TV station which led to the Prime TV management including company owner Gerald Shawa publicly apologizing and promising to work hand in hand with the government.

However, it seemed Government took that blow really seriously. The tension at the PRIME TV offices was strong as no one was sure what to do, what to report, whether to go on and sensitize. It looked like something was going on. Then to everybody’s expectation, word leaked that Zambia’s tax revenue agency the Zambian Revenue Authority would visit PRIME TV for Taxes Compliance Inspections. Would you call that bad timing or the right timing?