Lai: We’ll Regulate Social Media Because Youths Don’t Watch TV, Read Newspapers

The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has described social media regulation as an important mission that must be achieved by the federal government.

Mohammed said even though “social media has come to stay,” the federal government must regulate it to curb the rate at which Nigerian youths use it to spread fake news.

The minister gave the example of the recent #EndSARS protests, saying it was a “war” the youths fought by mobilising on social media.

Mohammed said these during his appearance before the House of Representatives committee on information, national orientation, ethics and values.

The minister appeared before the committee to defend the 2021 budget proposed by the Ministry of Information and Culture.

“The biggest challenge facing Nigeria today is fake news and misinformation,” said Mohammed.

“Based on that, we dedicated an entire national council on information’s meeting to that issue, after which we launched a national campaign against fake news in July 2018.

“We said, then, that the next war will be fought without a shot being fired, but with the use of fake news.

“We didn’t stop there. We went on a tour of all media houses to solicit their support in the fight against fake news. We launched the campaign to regulate social media, which was bitterly contested by the stakeholders. We kept saying that if we don’t regulate social media, it will destroy us. Social media and fake news will not destroy Nigeria.

“The recent #EndSARS war was fought on social media. They mobilised using the social media. The war today revolves around two things; smartphone and data. And these young men don’t even watch television or listen to radio or read newspapers.

“You will be shocked that when you start arguing with your children, they will be quoting social media. So, we need a social media policy in Nigeria and we need to empower the various agencies and we need technology to be able to regulate social media,” he said.

THE WHISTLER recalls that the anti-social media bill had caused uproar after it was introduced to the Nigerian Senate on November 5, 2019.

The bill, which was originally titled ‘Protection from Internet Falsehood and Manipulations Bill 2019’, seeks to criminalise the peddling of false or malicious news on social media.

The bill was sponsored by Senator Mohammed Sani Musa, who was accused of plagiarising it from a Singaporean law.

Meanwhile, Singapore is said to be at the bottom of global ranking in the freedom of speech.