SIR: The social media regulation and hate speech bills being debated on the floor of the National Assembly are nothing but a misplacement of priority. This is because the social media problems are fallouts of unemployment, hunger and other problems which have made the country the poverty capital of the world.
Since 2015, the prices of goods and services have continued to increase. As a matter of fact, it appears as if every new year celebration comes with new price tags. For instance, a bag of rice which was sold at the rate of N8,000 in 2015 is N25,000 today and this is applicable to almost all the daily items in the country.
Similarly in 2017, the price of a litre of petrol was jacked up from N97 to the current price of N145. This hike really affected the transportation system, house rent, school fees among other things that are essential to Nigerians. However, despite all these, the bills the lawmakers would rather give their utmost attentions are social media regulation and hate speech bills.
Social media regulation bill sponsored by the senator representing Niger East District, Sani Musa seeks protection from Internet falsehood and manipulations and other related matters. It’s penalty for defaulters goes up to N300,000 for individuals and up to N10 million for corporate organisations and imprisonment of up to three years or both.
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The National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speech Bill sponsored by the deputy chief whip, Aliyu Abdullahi, senator representing Niger North District, prescribes death penalty for anyone found guilty of spreading a falsehood that leads to the death of another person and seeks to help investigate and prosecute offenders.
Looking at the content of the bills, they seem to address the shortcomings of the new media (social media) but at the same time they fail to understand that these shortcomings become more pronounced because of the inability of the government to curb unemployment, hunger to mention but few.
As a matter of fact, where there is no buyer there cannot be seller; the preacher of hate speech and other related issues are doing that on the social media because they know the state has already bred an army of unemployed youth present on the social media.
These youths, most of the time, use this avenue to express their aggression by spreading anything spreadable on the social media. It is after all, common knowledge that where there is no idle hands to see, the workshop of the devil will be very difficult to operate.
Though, ethnicity, religion and other similar factors also come to play in the spread of hate speech but it is obvious that if poverty is taken away from them, the preacher of hate speech will find it difficult to sell his falsehood.
Presently, the nation has more than enough laws to take care of issues of hate speech, defamation of character or slander. Even, the criminal code identifies such offences and the punishment, there is a Cybercrime Act and other legislations that are already in place to address this problem but they seem not working because of poverty.
The government needs to provide an enabling environment for learning. This will seriously reduce the rate of half-baked graduates which have dominated the social media space waiting for anything spreadable to spread.
Also, government needs to improve on the social investment scheme, invest more in agriculture, create more jobs, transform our transportation system, repair the bad roads and declare war against poverty. When a total war is declared on poverty, the issues of hate speech will become a thing of the past.
- Femi Oluwasanmi,
Ibafo, Ogun State.
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