Designing an Audience Engagement Strategy for Community Radio Stations in Northern Nigeria

Community radio stations in Northern Nigeria face structural challenges of audience engagement that include linguistic diversity, low digital literacy, and historical public distrust of media institutions following conflict-related misinformation experiences. This study designed a practical audience engagement strategy framework for community radio stations in North Central and North East Nigeria. A participatory strategy development approach was employed, drawing on structured listener focus groups at four community radio stations in Plateau, Gombe, and Adamawa States, supplemented by interviews with 12 community radio station managers and engagement officers. Audience needs assessment data identified real-time phone-in participation (preferred by 78.6 percent of focus group participants), community story contribution programmes (67.3 percent), and listener committees for programming feedback (61.4 percent) as the most valued engagement mechanisms. Language accessibility, with programming offered in at least three local languages per station, was identified as a non-negotiable engagement requirement by all four station manager teams. The strategy framework encompasses six engagement pillars: listener committee establishment, multilingual programming commitments, SMS-based feedback integration, community reporter networks, annual listening surveys, and programming advisory boards with demographic representation requirements. A resource-tiered implementation model accommodates different budget realities across community stations. Stakeholder workshops with 20 communication professionals validated the framework's contextual appropriateness. The study recommends the National Broadcasting Commission formalise audience engagement standards for community radio licences in northern Nigeria.

Keywords: audience engagement, community radio, Northern Nigeria, radio management, participatory broadcasting