The Nigerian National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has spoken of the federal government’s ongoing efforts to regulate the Social Media, saying that without regulation, young people could be misguided.
Earlier on Monday, the Director General of NBC, Balarabe Ilelah, had said the agency requires the passage of the Social Media Regulation Bill that is before the National Assembly to enable the agency fight the “monster” of netizens.
Ilelah, who spoke when he hosted the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja, said that the bill seeking to repeal and reenact the NBC Act, CAP L11 laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004, has been read for the first time before the federal lawmakers.
Describing the ills of Social Media as a “monster,” the NBC boss decried that the current law does not give NBC the right to regulate Social Media.
Mrs. Francisca Aiyetan, Director, Broadcast Monitoring of NBC told Trust Radio that “every country is making efforts to regulate social media, and Nigeria also is making efforts because we know that there are a lot of things to harness from it. But if not regulated, it can also be a platform that will misguide our young people.
“The level we are now is discussing with stakeholders so to agree that, yes, we need to regulate social media and at that level, there should be legislation; there should be strengthening of the law to factor in all the things that are new on the broadcasting and content sharing space.
“And then, when you have the power and the enablement by law to do such things, then we can now look at, do we have the way to do it technology wise? Nevertheless, presently what we do is that we engage the platform owners as a regulator, we engage Google or YouTube, TikTok, so we know the faces behind these platforms.
“What we do is that, we escalate whatever we think is threatening, is injurious to our people, we escalate to them that we don’t think it’s right, take it down, and so far so good we’ve been working well. Other countries are doing the same, other countries are doing more.”
The issue of regulating social media has generated interests across platforms since Director-General of the NBC, Balarabe Ilelah, announced that the regulation bill had been sent to the National Assembly.
Ilelah disclosed this when he hosted Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja earlier in the week.
Describing the ills of social media as a “monster”, Ilelah said the bill is seeking to repeal and reenact the NBC Act, CAP L11 laws of the Federation of Nigeria 2004.
The NBC boss lamented that the current law does not give NBC the right to control social media.
While speaking on Daily Trust X spaces on Thursday evening, Nigerians expressed divergent views on the issue.
