The president Muhammadu Buhari administration has vowed to go hard on disinformation by renewing its plan to regulate the social media which it claims has become the hub for spreading fake news aimed at discrediting the Buhari Presidency.
The Buhari government has recently slammed fines on major news outlets such as Channels TV, AIT, for breaching the NBC's broadcast code during its coverage of the #EndSARS protests, and last week's attack on protesters at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos State.
According to a report by Daily Trust, data by the National Broadcasting Commission has shown that the Nigeria Broadcasting Code has been breached about 697 times in just three months by radio and television stations across the country.
In the data, which covered April to June, the code prohibiting airing of obscenity and unwholesome contents was breached 31 times by Abuja based radio and television stations.
They were followed by stations in Lagos zone with eight breaches while Uyo zone broadcast stations recorded seven breaches.
The data showed how many stations across the country recorded varying degrees of obscenity between April and June this year.
On political breach, stations in and around Kaduna emerged the highest with 23 breaches out of the 697, given it 62.16%, followed by Jos Zone with 16.21% and Maiduguri zone with 13.51%.
On hate speech, Kaduna Zone also came top with 40% followed by Abuja Zone with 33.33%, while Enugu, Lagos, Sokoto and Uyo Zones recorded 6.66% each.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, during his 2021 budget defense for his ministry, said the Buhari administration does not intend to deny Nigerians access to social media, but will have a policy that regulates social media and check fake news and misinformation.
He said, “The biggest challenge facing Nigeria today is fake news and misinformation. Based on that, we dedicated an entire National Council on Information’s meeting to that issue, after which we launched a national campaign against fake news in July 2018.
The minister, while responding to questions from members of the committee, noted that the next war to be fought in the country and across the world might be fought on the social media, making reference to the ongoing # EndSARS protests.
“We said, then, that the next war will be fought without a shot being fired, but with the use of fake news. We didn’t stop there. We went on a tour of all media houses to solicit their support in the fight against fake news. We launched the campaign to regulate social media, which was bitterly contested by the stakeholders. We kept saying that if we don’t regulate social media, it will destroy us. Social media and fake news will not destroy Nigeria."