Regulating Social Media In Nigeria: A Perspective from Within
By John Kokome
INFOMEDIA – By default God in his infinite wisdom created humanity with self-regulating mechanism imbued in us, that is why our instinct at every point in time responds either positively or negatively to both internal and external stimulus of whatever nature. So at every point man is guided by his conscience to either do good or evil.
To me, social media is just a platform for expression by individuals or group of individuals who feel the need to contribute to a discourse, promote sales, and pass across messages to their target audience, in a decent and generally acceptable way and manner. It is important to state that, there are stipulated usage guideline and policy, on the kind of contents that are permissible and the ones that are not permissible on these platforms.
The attempt by the federal government of Nigeria through the Ministry of Information and Culture to regulate the social media through a legislative fiat is one that should be approached with utmost care, in order not to trigger a backlash on government’s intended motive for wanting to regulate the platform. In its effort to regulate this global platform, government should be responsive enough to properly articulate its reasons for wanting to embark on such a journey, which many believe is an attempt to further gag the media/citizens from voicing their displeasure at government obnoxious policies for political reasons.
However, it is a known fact that the world is now a global village because of the various advancement in modern technology which social media is a microcosm of this advancement, whether the government of the day likes it or not, it has become part of our social existence and a great evolvement of the century.
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Furthermore, it is interesting to note that, the social media platforms have become a point of convergence for people of different nationality, race, religion, gender etc. to discuss issues of common interest as it were, which frankly speaking is a great phenomenon. Agreeably, there are some abuses here and there on social media, which can be curbed using the right approach without necessarily hurting the feelings of millions of Nigerians who are on these various platforms for different reasons some are genuine, while others are not.
The reality is that, we would always have the good and the bad amongst us the ability to manage both extremes is what should be of great concern to the government and not suffocate it through the back door, which may affect some government activities as well. If the intent is to guard against fake news, that is quite understandable, but again that is not enough reason to strangulate it. Even in the absence of social media, fake news would still exist.
One would have expected that the Ministry of Information and Culture, through the National Orientation Agency(NOA) to embark on an all-inclusive sensitization campaign, to get the buy-in of all Nigerians, in order to ensure that contents posted on social media platforms are devoid of fake news element and more importantly, the platform should be used more to promote the good things that binds us together as a people as against the things that constantly threatens to tear us apart.
I strongly believe this would go a long way to reassure Nigerians that it is not a witch-hunt exercise. Although, we may still have some people who would not want to believe the narrative from government, but if the government consistently communicate its sincerity of purpose not only in saying but also in action, many Nigerians would be convinced and indeed work together with the government to get rid of fake news element from social media platforms.
Ours should be a progressive country and not a retrogressive one, deploying suspicious tactics to regulate social media would definitely portray the government in bad light. The government should tread with utmost caution; two wrong can never and will never make a right!
John Kokome
A Communication Strategist & Public Affairs Analyst
Writes from Lagos State
[email protected]
