Nigeria’s minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has once again spoken on the need to regulate social media.
Lai Mohammed appeared before the House Committee on Information, National Orientation, Ethics and Values, today and said the government isn’t seeking to shut down social media space in the country because “the social media has come to stay.”
He, however, buttressed the need to have a policy that regulates social media and check fake news and misinformation.
He is quoted by THE PUNCH to have said ;
“The biggest challenge facing Nigeria today is fake news and misinformation. Based on that, we dedicated an entire National Council on Information’s meeting to that issue, after which we launched a national campaign against fake news in July 2018.
“We said, then, that the next war will be fought without a shot being fired, but with the use of fake news. We didn’t stop there. We went on a tour of all media houses to solicit their support in the fight against fake news. We launched the campaign to regulate social media, which was bitterly contested by the stakeholders. We kept saying that if we don’t regulate social media, it will destroy us.”
