Senate reintroduces bill to regulate social media

A bill with the intent of regulating activities of social media users in the country has passed first reading at the floor of the Nigerian senate.

The bill titled, ‘protection from internet falsehood and manipulations bill, 2019’ was sponsored by the senator representing Niger east Mohammed Sani Musa.

Mohammed Sani Musa said Nigeria needed the legislation as it would protect the country’s “fragile unity”, The Cable reports.

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“There has never been a time when Nigeria has been very fragile in terms of its unity than this period,” Musa said.

“It is not to stop people from going into the internet to do whatever they feel legitimate is okay to do but what we felt is wrong is for you to use the medium to document information that you know is false, just because you want to achieve your desirable interest.”

“If it is a corporate organisation that refused to block that false information despite the fact that they have been alerted by authorities not to disseminate that information for public interest and they still go ahead and do it, refusing to do that blockage will be penalised between N5 million to N10 million for those organisations,” the senator said.

“For example, MTN, Glo, 9 mobile etc. which we use their platform in transmitting this information, if nothing is done, we find them and you will see that it will be a deterrent to others.”