Tobias Sylvester
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed has called for an immediate regulation of social media in the country, warning that Nigeria is sitting on a keg of gunpowder if the issue of fake news is not urgently addressed.
Lai Mohammed made this call while responding to questions when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Information, National Orientation, Ethics and Values to defend the 2021 budget proposal, on Tuesday, October 28, 2020.
According to him, the biggest challenge facing Nigeria is the issue of fake news and misinformation, warning that the next war that will be fought in the country and across the globe may be fought through social media.
Making reference to the recent #ENDSARS protest which was fought on social media, the Minister decried that Nigerian youths now rely on social media, lamenting that they don’t even watch television or listen to radio or read newspapers.
“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.
“We are sitting on a time bomb on this issue of fake news. Unfortunately, we have no national policy on social media and we need one. When we went to China, we could not get google, Facebook, and Instagram. You could not even use your email in China because they made sure it is censored and well regulated,” he said.
The minister however explained that the government is not seeking to shut down the social media space in the country because the social media has come to stay, but to have a social media policy that regulates the social media and check fake news and misinformation.
”The biggest challenge facing Nigeria today is fake news and misinformation. Based on that, we dedicated an entire National Council on Information 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. In 2017, there was a fake video of the herdsmen and farmers’ crisis. It was a video of what happened in Tanzania and was played in Nigeria as if it was true.
“In 2017, a very popular entertainer in Nigeria raised a false alarm that students of the College of Education, Gidan Waya, Kaduna State had been murdered. There was an almost reprisal only for him to find out that it was not true. In the same 2017, we found out that some of the videos being posted are things that happened in other parts of the world. When there was a problem between South Africa and Nigeria, they were posting videos of what happened in India and Tanzania to suggest that Nigerians were being roasted alive. That was what led to the reprisals in the malls.
”At every time, the government has continued to draw attention that this is a menace. Unfortunately, it is not happening in Nigeria alone. The University of Ohio conducted research and discovered that Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election to Trump because of fake news which was promoted by Russia and they worked on three issues. First was that Trump had been endorsed by the Pope. The second was that when she was Secretary of State, she authorized the sale of arms and also that she was a very old person. These three things did a lot to sway the votes.
”In June this year, there was a riot in Ethiopia when a popular musician was killed. What the government did was to shut down social media for two days to bring that riot under control. Bear in mind that Ethiopia hosts the AU and office for Africa. But the truth is that the only way to do it was to shut down social media. We need technology and resources to dominate our social media. We need a social media policy to determine what can be seen and what cannot be seen.”
However, a member of the committee, Hon. Emmanuel Egoh Oghene, warned against any attempt to shut down the social media in the country, saying the action will be counter-productive and will lead the youths to believe that there was an attempt to truncate democracy in the country.
Oghene said it was wrong to always look at the negative sides of social media at all times without mentioning the good side. He said:
”Talking about the recent looting of COVID-19 items, in some places there will be looting, but nobody will know. The government will not know and the police will not know. But because of social media, people will be posting as it is happening and the government will be able to go there and save lives.
“There was a time when some boys were digging the road and because of social media, this information came out and the situation was arrested. If there are no social media, that will not happen.”
The lawmaker added that China is not a good example because it is a communist country, while Nigeria has always been a free democratic country.
This is coming few months after Lai Mohammed vehemently denied that Protection from Internet Falsehood and Manipulation Bill 2019, also know as Social Media Bill, exist in the National Assembly.
