The Nigerian government has inaugurated a committee on the implementation of Reforms in the National Broadcasting Commission with a vow to crack down on fake news and hate speeches in the country’s social media space.
Speaking at the event on Tuesday, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said the government is working to inject rationality into the social media space in the country.
This, he said, is to tackle fake news and hate speeches spreading without restriction on the media space.
According to a statement by the ministry, the minister said following the launch of the reform of the broadcast industry, many Nigerians reached out to the ministry, demanding a check on social media.
“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,” the minister said.
Earlier, the minister inaugurated a committee on the Implementation of Reforms in the National Broadcasting Commission.
Mr Mohammed said many have hailed the move while some attacked it by accusing the federal government of trying to stifle press freedom or gag journalists.
“In the first instance, let me say this. No amount of attacks, sponsored or otherwise, will stop the implementation of the approved recommendations. And only non-patriots and anarchists will kick against measures aimed at putting an end to fake news and hate speech, especially in our broadcast industry,” he said.
He said the federal government does not have the intention of suffocating stifling free speech or gagging journalists or anyone.
He said the campaign of the Buhari-led administration is against fake news and hate speech.
He, however, said anyone caught disseminating fake news or hate speech, need to be worried because they will not be spared.
“We cannot allow fake news and hate speech to become free speech, because these Siamese twins of evil are capable of inflicting untold damage on our democracy and threatening our national unity. They represent a clear and imminent danger to our survival as a nation,” he said.
Monopoly
The minister said the committee he earlier inaugurated will also be saddled with ending all forms of monopoly detrimental to the actualisation of the immense potential of the broadcast industry.
He cited a situation where a few people corner a chunk of the industry to the detriment of others, especially the teeming and talented youth, as totally unacceptable and untenable.
“The clearest example of the creative energy that can be unleashed when monopoly is totally broken can be seen in the telecommunications industry,” he said.
He said even though the broadcast industry has been liberalised, any indication of monopoly is contradictory to the liberalisation of the broadcast industry and must be dismantled.
In the case of Nigeria, he said, it’s the monopoly of content that breeds anti-competition practices.
The committee was given six weeks to submit its report, after which the minister said the implementation of the approved measures to inject sanity into our broadcast industry will start immediately
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