Nigerians have continued to call on the Senate to drop the bill that seeks to curtail Nigerians' freedom on social media.
The Senate is bracing up for a public hearing on a bill that seeks to curtail Nigerians’ freedom on social media.The bill, titled Protection from Internet Falsehood and Manipulation Bill, 2019, has come to be known as social media bill. It passed the second reading of the Senate in November, 2019.
With a total of 36 clauses, the bill prescribes up to N300,000 fine for an individual and up to N10 million for corporate organisations found guilty of spreading false content., saying it is a move to stifle voices and gag dissent in a country on the red patch of the 2019 World Press Freedom Index where it ranks 120th of the 180 worst countries for freedom of expression.
CDD, in its latest release, made three cases on each of business, democratic and security fronts against the bill. On security, CDD said the bill does not provide for a standard of effective investigation in the determination of contraventions of its provisions. It argued that scant proofs coupled with subjective judgements are “recipes for abuse that could ultimately contravene freedom of speech.”“This is worsened by an under-resourced and digital-apathetic police force,” it further wrote, “who are unlikely to use a publicly available methodology for selecting cases.
“Beyond national and state education ministries, the National Orientation Agency could seek to introduce awareness of and techniques to mitigate these biases into the national consciousness,” it wrote.
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