Nigeria Sets to Regulate Social Media Usage
POLITICS DIGEST – The Federal Government says it would regulate social media usage in the country to help bring sanity to its users, Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has said.
According to the minister, social media is today, totally going out of control in the country.
The minister who disclosed this at a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday also said the Nigeria was looking at how to inject sanity into the social media space.
“Social media constitutes real danger to the unity of this country. We will not be the first to check the recklessness of social media. “What goes on social media is so ridiculous and we will contain it,” the minister said.
He said the regulation will, however, be in line with global best practices as obtainable in the United Kingdom, Singapore and other jurisdictions.
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Mohammed however said government has no plans to gag the press or stifle the media as being insinuated.
He said the government will never allow anarchists to take over the nation’s airwaves and media space.
The minister said: “Gentlemen, since we launched our reform of the broadcast industry, many Nigerians have reached out to us, demanding that we also look into how to sanitize the Social Media space. “I can assure you that we are also working on how to inject sanity into the Social Media space which, today, is totally out of control
“No responsible government will sit by and allow fake news and hate speech to dominate its media space, because of the capacity of this menace to exploit our national fault lines to set us against each other and trigger a national conflagration.
“That is why we will continue to evolve ways to tackle fake news and hate speech until we
banish both.
“Therefore, Gentlemen, we once again seek your support for our efforts to banish fake news and hate speech from our media space”, the minister added.
