WARNING: FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PLANNING TO CLAMP DOWN ON SOCIAL MEDIA USERS


The Federal government of Nigeria through the Nigerian broadcasting Commission (NBC) has said it is planning to start clamping down on social media users' excessive use of all the platforms.


The National Broadcasting Commission's Director of Broadcasting Monitoring, Francisca Aiyetan said this recently while answerimg questions during an interview with daily trust on the excessive use of social media for negative and uncensored contents which is prevalent across all the social media platforms.


The NBC director explains that the commission "is engaging with major social media platforms to curb the excesses of their users".
This came against the background of the indiscrinate use of the social media platforms for all forms of negative contents and nefarious activities. Though, all the social media platforms have ways of checking what contents users put on them, but such check is slacking as many contents that are not "broadcast worthy" filled all the spaces. The present use of the platforms by the so called influencers for nefarious, illegal and anti-social order acts is a thing of deep concern to well meaning people.

According to the NBC Director,
“Every country is making efforts to regulate social media, and Nigeria also is making efforts because we know that there are a lot of things to harness from it. But if not regulated, it can also be a platform that will misguide our young people.
“The level we are now is discussing with stakeholders so to agree that, yes, we need to regulate social media and at that level, there should be legislation; there should be strengthening of the law to factor in all the things that are new on the broadcasting and content sharing space.
“And then, when you have the power and the enablement by law to do such things, then we can now look at, do we have the way to do it technology-wise? Nevertheless, presently what we do is that we engage the platform owners as a regulator, we engage Google YouTube, and TikTok, so we know the faces behind these platforms.”


Earlier, it was reported that Balarabe Ilelah, NBC Director-General, said he has sent a bill for the regulation of social media to the national assembly. Ilelah, who described the ills of social media as a “monster”, said the current law does not give NBC the right to regulate social media.

Therefore, the NBC boss said it is seeking to repeal and reenact the NBC Act, CAP L11 laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004.
“We want to tell you that a bill for an act to repeal and amend the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) act, CAP L11 laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, to accommodate the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting service, also to promote quality audio and video, efficient management of the spectrum, Nigeria Broadcast Institute, social media regulation and related matters has been read for the first time on the floor of the national assembly,”
“All these that are mentioned are not captured in the present act of the commission. We have already submitted a bill to amend the act"
“One of our major problems now is social media. Unless there is a law that allows NBC to act on social media issues, the issue will continue to be a monster in our daily lives in this country,” the DG said.
It will be recalled that recently, a court case revealed that a particular blogger was paid by distractors and enemy of a renowned Yoruba actress, Eniola Badmus to tarnish her image. The annoying thing was that the court sitting in Lagos found the blogger guilty, but was asked to pay only ₦150,000 as a fine. This may be because there was no direct law on such issue or on social media misuse.Therefore, it becomes necessary to enact new laws to take care of issues like this and to regulate the use of social media platforms to forestall such ugly situations and others.
Another issue of great concern is the uploading on the platforms of real sexual acts and nudity as well as other erroctic and violent sensual contents that should be of privacy.
To curb this therefore, the commission that has the regulatory function of broadcasting space in Nigeria, NBC said it is the plan of the "commission to regulate social media".
"If social media is not regulated, young people could be misguided" says Francisca Aiyetan, the NBC Broadcast Monitoring Director.

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