On the evening of 31 October 1959, in a converted bungalow at Agodi in Ibadan, Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) began test transmission with the now-famous station identification 'WNTV — First in Africa'. The first scheduled programme aired on 23 April 1960: a speech by Premier Obafemi Awolowo introducing the station, followed by Yoruba folk music and an episode of the British puppet serial *Twizzle*. The transmitter was a 5-kilowatt Marconi unit installed by Overseas Rediffusion Ltd of London, the studio cameras were Marconi Mark IIIs, and the technical staff were trained at the BBC Wood Norton school in Worcestershire — but the station was African-owned, financed by a £500,000 Western Region Government investment voted by the Awolowo cabinet specifically to break the federal NBC's information monopoly ahead of the 1959 federal elections.
WNTV was indeed the first television station in tropical Africa — beating Egyptian and South African television (both 1960) by months — but it was emphatically *not* the first in Africa: Algeria's Télé-Algérie had been broadcasting since 1956 under French colonial signal, and Morocco's Télévision Marocaine since 1954. The 'First in Africa' tagline is sub-Saharan accurate. The political model — a regional government using television as a counter-weight to the federal centre — was copied within twelve months: Eastern Nigeria Television (ENTV) Aba, May 1960; Radio-Television Kaduna (RTK), March 1962; NBC-TV Lagos (federal), April 1962. By the end of the First Republic Nigeria had four competing television services, the most for any African country.
Military centralisation killed regional television. Decree No. 24 of 1977 abolished the regional stations and merged them into the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) with a 25-station national network. Colour transmission arrived for FESTAC '77 (the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, Jan–Feb 1977). The 1992 deregulation that opened radio also opened television: AIT (Africa Independent Television, 1996) and Channels Television (1995) are the first private licensed broadcasters; MultiChoice DStv (1995 licence, 1996 launch) and the earlier ABG Communications (early 1990s, Kano) see ABG Communications cable pioneer introduced subscription satellite.
Adoption lag: BBC public television 1936 → WNTV 1959 = 23 years. Colour: UK 1967 → Nigeria 1977 = 10 years. Digital terrestrial: UK 1998 → Nigeria's stalled DSO 2016–24 (incomplete) = 18+ years and counting. Television is the technology where Nigeria came closest to leading sub-Saharan Africa — and the regional pluralism Awolowo built was undone, not by technology, but by federal decree.