When the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, announced the indefinite ban of microblogging site, Twitter, in Nigeria, following the removal of a tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari, which the platform owners said was in violation of its community standards, the decision did not come as a surprise to some of us.
In announcing the ban, Mohammed cited what he termed “the persistent use of the platform for activities that are capable of undermining Nigeria’s corporate existence.”
Let it be known that Twitter did not just take a decision to delete the tweet by the president. The tweet had generated public outcry and incensed a lot of Nigerians who reported it and as it does in other similar cases, the platform owners removed it from its space.
That singular action may have presented the opportunity for the Buhari-led administration to begin in earnest, the regulation of the social media space, an agenda it has had since 2015 when the president was first elected and has made various failed attempts to carry out.
Mohammed, and by extension, the President Buhari administration, has never hidden his aversion to the use of social media in the country and never missed an opportunity to blame propagation of fake news and disinformation on the various platforms.
Even though he said sometimes in 2015, while addressing a section of the media and has repeated same at other fora that the government has no interest in regulating the press and by extension, the social media, he has at every point, shown his discomfort with the unregulated social media access and the freedom enjoyed by its users.
Using the pretext of championing the cause against fake news, in the interest of national unity and cohesion, he propagates his dislike for the freedom the social media gives.
The minister has at different times campaigned for regulation of social media. He is either urging Nigerians to watch what they post online, asking the social media platform owners to impose regulations or outrightly calling for legislation to regulate social media.
In 2017, the National Council on Information (NCI) was dedicated to discussing fake news and social media and one of the recommendations of the council was that a council be set up to regulate the use of social media.
In July 2018, his ministry launched a national campaign against fake news where he said that the next war to be fought would be prosecuted with fake news and also launched a campaign to regulate social media. The campaign was however rejected by stakeholders.
In October 2020, the minister had while defending the ministry’s 2021 budget before the National Assembly, tried to enlist the support of the legislature in formulating a national policy on use of social media to control fake news and misinformation, describing social media as the platform of choice for those who propagate fake news.
“If you go to China, you cannot get Google, Facebook or Instagram but you can only use your email because they have made sure that it is regulated… We need a social media policy that will regulate what should be said and posted and what should not. We also need technology and resources to dominate our social media space,’’ he told them.
Prior to this, the National Assembly had come up with two bills, one for ‘Protection from Internet Falsehood and Manipulations,’ and the other for a ‘National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speech.’ Both bills were met with stiff opposition and roundly rejected.
Things came to a head late 2020 with the #ENDSARS protest and it was only a matter of time before the minister bared his fangs. The minister, had during his appearance before the National Assembly, pointed out that mobilisation for the #ENDSARS protest was done with the aid of social media.
And so an opportunity to begin the long planned social media ban presented itself when Twitter removed the infamous tweet.
Curiously, even though Facebook deleted the same post from its platform, citing similar reasons, there has been no reaction from the government.
Social media has evolved overtime to become a space for the expression of opinions and debate by citizens, many of whom are independent minded and some of these views are not favourable to the government but that is the beauty of democracy.
While it is true that some people get uncontrollable and overstep the bounds of freedom of speech in expressing themselves, the obsession of the government with regulation of the social media space makes its every intent suspect. This action of the government against Twitter, without recourse to the fact that a lot of young Nigerians make a living off the platform and that it serves as a platform for information gathering for a lot of people amounts to killing a fly with a sledgehammer.
Even though the government has overtime chosen to only look at the negative sides of social media, many agencies of the government rely on it, particularly Twitter, to disseminate information and one advantage it has is that it helps to gauge the pulse of the people on policies as reactions are instant and can be collated to drive policy formulation.
The National Assembly for instance does not have an active website and relies on its official Twitter handle @nassnigeria and the Twitter handles of the Senate and House of Representatives, @NGRSenate and @HouseNGR, respectively, for dissemination of information about the legislature.
Even the announcement of the Twitter ban was made on the same platform!
The way I see it, even though there is no dearth of laws by the country to prosecute purveyors of fake news and other such offences, if the government is intent on regulating social media, it is not something to be done surreptitiously. It must be done properly with stakeholder engagement and participation otherwise it will be viewed with the same suspicious lens and again, rejected.
