THE Police in Rivers State has arrested two men for gaining unlawful access to an electronic billboard and streaming ‘pornography content’ on it in Port-Harcourt.
Rivers State Signage and Advertisement Agency, RISAA, shut down the electronic billboard around Garrison in Port-Harcourt City Local Government Area of the state.
Acting Managing Director of RISSA, Okea Anthony announced the decision of the state government at a press briefing in Port-Harcourt on Friday.
He also disclosed that two people have been arrested and detained at the Olu Obasanjo police station in connection with the incident.
While condemning the act, the RISAA boss said investigation is on-going to ascertain if the incident was a sabotage or negligence on the part of the advertising company.
He said, “All necessary steps have been taken to ensure that this does not happen anymore to serve as a deterrent to any other organisation or company that does advertisement business in Rivers State.
“As you can see this structure is shut down and is now under our custody.
“The agency and well meaning people of Rivers State condemn this.
Anthony also said the Advertisement Practitioners Council of Nigeria, APCON, is yet to explain if it authorised such content to be displayed in public.
In a statement, owners of the billboard, E-motion Advertising, said, “It has come to our attention that an unauthorized break-in happened at one of our sites in Rivers State, where an individual (name withheld) gained unlawful access to our site and local server.
“The individual then caused an obscene material to be uploaded to an external display device.
“Our remote monitoring team was immediately alerted to this incident and the LED board was turned off.
“The culprit has since been apprehended by the police and taken into custody for questioning.
“As a socially responsible company, we are working with law enforcement agencies to ensure that the law takes its full course in prosecuting this heinous and distasteful act that goes against all manner of public decorum.
“Finally and most importantly, we apologize for this distasteful incident and assure the public that we are currently putting additional measures in place across our sites to prevent a reoccurrence.”
Residents and commuters in Port Harcourt were on Thursday shocked as the billboard displayed explicit content for about 60 seconds.
