Does Social Media Empower Criticism, Is It The People's Right ?

The Internet has been abuzz with stories and reactions to the proposed bill by the Nigerian Senate to place restrictions on social media and Nigeria’s Internet space.

The bill has been met with widespread criticism with many faulting several of its clauses for a perceived hindrance to free speech. Still, a lot of grey areas shroud the proposed bill in what is fast becoming a norm for African governments.

How did it begin?
Anti-social Media Bill (Nigeria) was introduced by the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on 5 November 2019 to  criminalise the use of the social media in peddling false or malicious information. The original title of the bill  is Protection from Internet Falsehood and Manipulations Bill 2019. It was sponsored by Senator Mohammed Sani Musa from the largely conservative northern Nigeria. After the bill passed second reading on the floor of the Nigeria Senate and its details were made public, information emerged on the social media accusing the sponsor of the bill of plagiarising a similar law in Singapore which is at the bottom of global ranking in the freedom of speech and of the press. But the senator denied that he plagiarised Singaporean law.

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Opposition to the bill

Angry reactions trailed the introduction of the bill, and a number of civil society organisations, human rights 
activists, and Nigerian citizens unanimously opposed the bill. International rights group, Amnesty International 
and Human Rights Watch condemned the proposed legislation saying it is aimed at gagging freedom of speech which is a universal right in a country of over two hundred million people.

Opposition political parties are very critical of the bill and accused the government of attempting to strip bare, 
Nigerian citizens of their rights to free speech and destroying same social media on whose power and influence the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC came to power in 2015. Nigeria Information Minister, Lai Mohammed has been at  the center of public criticism because he is suspected to be the brain behind the proposed act. Lai a former spokesman of then opposition All Progressives Congress is a well-known propagandist who thrived on peddling falsehood as a political weapon against then ruling People's Democratic Party, PDP that lost power to the APC in 2015

A "Stop the Social Media Bill! You can no longer take our rights from us" online petition campaign to force the Nigeria parliament to drop the bill received over 90,000 signatures within 24 hours. In November 2019, after the bill  passed second reading in the senate, Akon Eyakenyi, a senator from Akwa Ibom State publicly said he would resist the  bill.

Support for the bill.
Those who support the proposed act especially Senators have often argued that the law would help curtail hate speech.  President Muhammad Buhari who is seen as the biggest beneficiary of the influence and power of the social media and  free speech that is now termed hate speech has been mute about it. But the president's senior aides and family members  have publicly spoken in support of the bill. In November 2019, the wife of the president, Aisha Buhari, told a  gathering at the Nigeria's National Mosque in the capital, Abuja that if China with over one billion people could  regulate the social media, Nigeria should do same. But Nigerians reacted saying Nigeria is not a one-party communist state like China. Days later, a daughter to the president, Zahra Indimi told a gathering of  young people in Abuja that social media had become a potent weapon for bullying those they thought were doing better than them in terms of social class and called for a critical regulation.

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Objectives.
One objective of the bill is to prevent the transmission of false statements or declaration of facts in Nigeria.
Another objective of the bill is to end the financing of online mediums that transmit false statements.
Measures will be taken to detect and control inauthentic behaviour and misuse of online accounts (parody accounts). When paid content is posted towards a political end, there will be measures to ensure the poster discloses such  information.
- There will be sanction for offenders.
- Transmission of false statement
According to the bill, a person must not:

Transmit a statement that is false or, Transmit a statement that might:
i. Affect the security or any part of Nigeria.
ii. Affect public health, public safety or public finance.
iii. Affect  Nigeria's relationship with other countries.
iv. influence the outcome of an election to any office in a general  election.
v. Cause enmity or hatred towards a person or group of persons.
Anyone guilty of the above is liable to a fine of N300,000 or three years' imprisonment or both (for individual); and  a fine not exceeding ten million naira (for corporate organisations).
Same punishment applies for fake online accounts that transmit statements listed above.

Parody accounts
The bill says a person shall not open an account to transmit false statement.
Anyone found guilty will be fined N200,000 or three years' imprisonment or both (for an individual) or five million naira (for corporate organisations).
If such accounts transmit a statement that will affect security or influence the outcome of an election, such a person  will be fined N300,000 or three years' imprisonment or both.
If a person receives payment or reward to help another to transmit false statements knowingly, he/she is liable to a  fine of N150,000 or three years' imprisonment or both. If a person receives payment or reward to help another to  transmit a statement affects security or influence the outcome of an election, the fine is N300,000 or three years'  imprisonment or both (for individual) and ten million naira for organisations.

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Declaration
According to the bill, a law enforcement department can issue a "declaration" to offenders. And this declaration will  be issued even if the "false statement" has been corrected or pulled down.

The offender will be required to publish a "correction notice" in a specified newspaper, online location or other 
printed publication of Nigeria.
Failure to comply, a person is liable to N200,000 or 12 months' imprisonment or both (for individual) and five million naira for organisations.

Access blocking order
The bill says the law enforcement department will also issue an access blocking order to offenders.

The law enforcement department may direct the NCC to order the internet access service provider to disable access by users in Nigeria to the online location and the NCC must give the internet access service provider an access blocking  order.
An internet access service provider that does not comply with any access blocking order is liable on conviction to a  fine not exceeding ten million naira for each day during any part of which that order is not fully complied with, up  to a total of five million naira.

Who does it affect?
The bill gives law enforcement agents the power to arrest those who are found guilty of spreading false information online. While this might be a good thing, any user of the Internet could fall on the wrong side of the proposed bill seeing as “falsehood” or “Truth” have relative meanings.

The major institutions/individuals the new bill directly targets include, but are not limited to:

- Radio/TV stations
- Online/print newspapers
- Journalists
- On-air personalities (OAP)
- Website hosts
- Bloggers
- YouTube channels
- Social media influencers
- Internet service providers

Targeting these institutions/individuals means access to information could be either controlled/doctored by the government at best, or simply non-existent at worst.

Now you might be a model citizen who may neither lie nor cause anyone harm, but the broad spectrum of persons/activities the bill could affect means that anyone might be deprived access to the Internet as a result of the actions of another.

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“The law enforcement department may direct the NCC to order the Internet access service provider to disable access by users in Nigeria to the online location and the NCC must give the Internet access service provider access blocking order.”

As pointed out by Techpoint’s guest author, Enyioma Madubuike, a legal consultant, suppressing free speech can be a very dangerous thing as it gives government a monopoly on the truth.

As for the excesses the bill is trying to curb, there are pre-existing laws and measures already in place to control such acts.

What can you do for now?
Social Media Bill Protesters against the Social Media Bill Nigerians on social media are not taking kindly to this bill, with some of them finding ways of placing pressure on the elected lawmakers representing each Nigerian constituency.

A petition titled “Stop the Social Media Bill! You can no longer take our rights from us” is currently on the social activism platform, Change.org and over 75,000 of the 150,000 signatures targeted have been gotten.

Pressing even further, a Nigerian Twitter user created a thread containing the contact information of the 109 senators at the Nigerian National House of Assembly for anyone concerned to call their respective representatives in the Nigerian Senate.

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Nigeria’s tech community has duly responded to that thread, developing several applications that can be used to send automated messages relaying concerns about the bill to the respective lawmakers in the created thread.