The bill regulating social media in the country has passed the first reading at the Senate, with a punishment of N150,000 or three years imprisonment for social media offenders.
The bill called ‘Protection from Internet Falsehood and Manipulations Bill 2019’ is sponsored by Mohammed Sani Musa, a Senator representing Niger East, and was read for the first time yesterday.
Speaking to journalists in Abuja, Musa stated that the bill would protect Nigeria’s “fragile unity.”
There has never been a time when Nigeria has been very fragile in terms of its unity than this period. It is not to stop people from going into the internet to do whatever they feel legitimately 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 organization 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 penalized between N5 million to N10 million for those organizations.
For example, MTN, Glo, 9 mobile, etc. which we use their platform in transmitting this information, if nothing is done, we fine them and you will see that it will be a deterrent to others.
Mohammed Sani Musa – salonedaily.com
