The federal government will this month convene a stakeholders’ meeting as part of efforts to design a framework for the “sanitization of the social media.”
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed said this when his he received the Finnish Ambassador to Nigeria, Jyrki Pulkkinen, and the Ambassador of Innovation of the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Finland, Jarmo Sareva, who were on an advocacy visit to promote the ideals of the Freedom Online Coalition.
He said the government’s response to the “irresponsible” use of the social media to promote fake news and hate speech by some unscrupulous individuals is to work with stakeholders to device a mechanism to sanitize the social media, without stifling press freedom or infringing on the rights of individuals.
“Our attempt to sanitize the social media is not at all an attempt to stifle the media and I want to make this very clear…. As we speak today, we will be meeting later in the month with leaders of the media, civil society, security and other stakeholders on how to sanitize our social media and make it safe for all.
“We, especially in this ministry, have watched with some trepidation the social media front and we have seen how some people try to abuse this platform to cause disaffection, especially by pushing fake news and hate speech,” Mohammed said.
He said the government remains committed to the protection of human rights, both offline and online, noting, however, that it will not shy away from ensuring that Nigeria has a responsibly free media.
The Minister said that in spite of the plurality of values, tribes, cultures and religions, the government has striven to strike a balance between press/individual freedom and national security.
In his remarks, the Finnish Ambassador to Nigeria, Pulkkinen, urged Nigeria to partner with global bodies like the Freedom Online Coalition in order to address some of the challenges posed by the social media.
For his part, the Ambassador of Innovation in the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Finland, Sarevo, said the Freedom Online Coalition is a group of 31 like-minded countries formed to promote human rights online and also ensure cyber security, privacy and protection of data against illegal usage and monetization and trust, with a view to protecting all those uploading data on the internet.
Godsgift Onyedinefu, Abuja
