Senate Moves to Regulate Social Media, Prescribes 3 Years Imprisonment for Violators

Pat Stevens/

A bill entitled, ‘protection from internet falsehood and manipulations bill, 2019’ has passed first reading at the senate.

The bill is sponsored by Senator Mohammed Sani Musa, representing Niger East.

Speaking with journalists on the bill, the senator said Nigeria needs the legislation because it would protect its “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,” Musa said.

He said the bill proposes a punishment of N150,000 fine or three years imprisonment for any offender.

He added: “If it is a corporate organisation 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 penalised between N5 million to N10 million for those organisations,” the senator said.

“For example, MTN, Glo, 9 mobile etc. which we use their platform in transmitting these information, if nothing is done, we fine them and you will see that it will be a deterrent to others.”

Recently, Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, disclosed that the federal government was seeking ways of regulating the social media.

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