Nigerian government set to regulate social media

The Federal Government is set to sanitise the social media space to curtail fake news and hate speech.

This was disclosed on Tuesday by the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed at a press conference in Abuja.

According to Mohammed, the Federal Government will implement reforms in the broadcast industry and sanction any defaulting broadcast media.

The broadcast media reform, Mohammed added will extend to the social media space which he described as ‘totally out of control’.

“Since we launched our reform of the broadcast industry, many Nigerians have reached out to us, demanding that we also look into how to sanitise the Social Media space. I can assure you that we are also working on how to inject sanity into the Social Media space which, today, is totally out of control,” he said.

Mohammed added that no responsible government would sit back and allow activities such as fake news and hate speech, which is capable of setting the country on fire, to continue unchecked.

“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.

“That is why we will continue to evolve ways to tackle fake news and hate speech until we banish both,” he said.

He assured that the planned social media regulation would be in line with international best practices as obtainable in Singapore, the United Kingdom and other countries.

– Daily Trust