Nigerian Govt to regulate social media – Lai Mohammed

Emmanuel AmudaOctober 29, 2019

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The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed has said that the Federal Government is going to sanitize the social media.

He said that there is no going back on plans to regulate activities on social media in Nigeria.

He disclosed this at a press conference on Tuesday in Abuja.

Mohammed said the regulation will, however, be in line with global best practices as obtainable in the United Kingdom, Singapore and other jurisdictions.

According to the minister, no government will fold its arms and allow activities capable of setting the country on fire to continue.

“I think It has reached a level that the government may just no longer fold its arms and allow this to continue,” Mohammed stated.

” 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.

“It has reached a level that the government may just no longer fold its arms and allow this to continue,” the minister who has severally denied reports that the present administration intends to gag the media said.

Social media has been one of the channels where purveyors of fake news circulate false information to mislead the public.

The decision to regulate the social media comes weeks after the government increased fines for hate speech, an action that has been described as a move to silent critics of the administration.

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He added that no amount of criticism would stop the government from implementing tougher sanctions for broadcast stations that violate the broadcast code.

The minister, however, said the regulation would not affect “responsible journalism”.