Several months after the proposed anti-social media bill sparked flames across Nigeria, which seems to have been subdued, the BBC World Service has called its attention to the global audience by creating a debate on the issue at the ongoing Social Media Week in Lagos.
Abayomi Shogunle, head of public complaints at the Nigerian Police Force, giving his contribution from the angle of law enforcement, said that there were currently no existing laws in place for misuse of social media.
“I don’t want to say that social media should be regulated. I would instead, prefer to say that we should have provisions that will make people safe online. This is because certain crimes that happen on the physical world have been traced to originate from the virtual world,” he said, while speaking on the debate titled ‘should social media be regulated?’
“In most cases, everybody that goes to the police expects that we resolve and solve problems. But it is unfortunate that there are no enabling laws put in place to solve these problems. Police don’t make laws, we can only enforce existing laws,” he said.
Alex Jakana of the BBC World Service/BBC Africa mentioned that Bala Na’ Allah, the deputy Senate leader, who proposed the “Bill for an Act to Prohibit Frivolous Petitions and other Matters Connected Therewith, 2015 (SB.143)” had confirmed his attendance to this debate but had pulled out at the last minute with no explanation as to why.
It should be recalled that while presenting the bill, which passed its second reading in a record eight days, Bala Na’ Allah said the aim of the bill was to bring sanity into the system, and make way for “credible and verifiable” petitions.
Gbenga Sesan, one of the founders of Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (PIN), a non-governmental social enterprise that connects Nigerian youths to ICT-enabled opportunities, said the government had no existing tools to monitor or regulate social media effectively and was only proposing the supposed bill to somewhat mute the people who have power and freedom only on social media.
Bayo Banjo, former president of Nigeria Internet Group (NIG), told BusinessDay in a telephone interview that the proposed bill was unnecessary, as there were other laws in place for defamation and slander online, and the new bill showed that the Senate was going round in circles revisiting issues that had already been dealt with instead of finding solutions to other pressing issues.
