The Federal Government of Nigeria has insisted on its plans to regulate the social media airspace, saying there is no going back as the move is aimed at preventing disastrous calamity from spreading fake news.
Speaking in an interview, on Monday, the Minister for Youths and Sports Development, Sunday Dare said, series of events happening across the world and in the country is 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.
According to him, a recent film production, jointly produced by tech giant owners, including Apple, and Google, specifically pointed a finger at “Twitter as a purveyor of fake news.
“And there are other platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, 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.
Sunday Dare, a former Director at the Nigeria Telecommunication Commission, argued that there is need to question what Nigerians actually do online because findings led that millions of Nigerians youths spend average seven hours online dialy.
He lamented that, “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,.”
Sunday 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.
