By Shakirudeen Bankole
The Federal Government of Nigeria has insisted that there is no going back on it’s plans to regulate the social media airspace, saying the move is aimed at preventing a more disastrous calamity from the spread of fake news.
Speaking on Channels television Sunrise Daily on Monday, Minister for Youths and Sports Development, Sunday Dare, said series of events across the world and in the country, have rationalised the logic behind the regulation.
He said besides constituting integrity threat to body of professional news dissemination institutions in the country, “social media has been reportedly found to be the purveyors of fake news” across the world.
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According to him, a recent film production, jointly produced by tech giant owners, including Google, and Apple, specifically pointed a finger at “Twitter as a purveyor of fake news.
“And there are other platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and all sorts.
“The need to regulate the social media airspace can not be overemphasized. The recent #EndSARS protest was a good example, where people were practically being incited on nonexistent killings of people,” he said.
Dare, a former Director at the Nigeria Telecommunications Commission, argued that though findings revealed that millions of Nigerian youths spend average seven hours online daily, “but there is a need to question what they are actually doing online.
“The is because the government has rolled out series of economic intervention programmes, most of which are even posted online, but the youth are not taking advantage of it, ” he lamented.
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Dare furthered that as a Nigerian with good journalism background, the proposed regulation would not amount to censorship as being alleged.
“We have to have trust in our National Assembly. They have actually been elected to represent the people. And we should have faith in them that they would do the bidding of the people.
“The Social Media Bill is going to bring a lot of sanity to the way the social media is being used, especially against Fake news, which has more destructive tendencies if not tamed in the bud now….,” he continued.
