The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, yesterday, restated the resolve of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government to regulate the social media in its spirited bid to keep the country united.
Speaking at a media session with senior journalists in Lagos, the minister said the government would not fold its arms and allow the reckless use of social media to aggravate fault lines and throw the country into turmoil.
Mohammed, however, assured Nigerians that, in curbing the excesses of social media, the government had no plan to shut down the Internet nor stifle press freedom or free speech, as some have insinuated, adding that social media was here to stay.
To validate the government’s standpoint, the minister quoted former US President, Barack Obama to have said that the Internet and social media have helped to create the “single biggest threat” to democracy.
He also restated Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg’s call for more regulation of social media content just as he noted that other giant tech companies seemed to agree with Zuckerberg’s call.
While faulting the way some traditional media reported the last EndSARS crisis, especially the attack on security agents, Mohammed opined that “it seems you, unfortunately, fell for the hoax that there was a ‘massacre’ at Lekki Toll Gate. Almost all papers ran screaming headlines of massacre or killings at the toll gate the day after the October 20 incident, during which soldiers fired blank ammunition into the air to disperse protesters.”
He further asked: “Did you also fall for social media manipulation of the events that transpired that evening? No group was better placed than you to lead the narrative of what happened that night, but it seems you ceded that authority to social media, which has no time for the rigours of gate-keeping or fact-checking. I hope in reviewing your coverage of the whole crisis, you will rectify that anomaly.” Theguardianng
Tags:
social media