Spokesman to President Muhammadu Buhari, Garba Shehu, has declared that Nigerians kicking against the regulation of social media were looking for sympathy and dollars from the US government and donor agencies.
He said this at the weekend in Abuja during a dinner organized by the Press Corps of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.
“Social media has become a problem for many families because rights of women and children are being abused. There is a need to protect vulnerable members of society”, Vanguard quotes him as saying.
“There is a need to protect minorities whether tribal or religious in our own country. So, it makes sense that you as media stakeholders come around the Minister of Information and Culture and formulate the kind of regulations you want so that it is not that there is a top-bottom approach so that government will not be accused of imposing a regulatory mechanism on the media.
“The minister is saying come, sit down with me and let us talk about it. And I was told that the day he called on the Nigeria Union of Journalist NUJ, they walked out on him. If that report is true, I think it is very unfortunate. I think we need to come around him and offer media-driven solutions so that at the end of it this country will have a vibrant and effective social media communication system.
“At the same time, it is the one that does not drive children to addictions and that it also protects consumers of media content from harmful invasion either of our privacy or addiction of children to some mercy-less commercialism that are profit-driven and are taking advantage of our own exposure to mass communication systems.
“I would like to appeal that, please give serious consideration to some of these elements and see how the media in the country can work together with government to find communication solutions to purely communication problems. It is not political, the government has no reason to undermine or weaken the mass media.
“When you realize it, in countries where the mass media are being suppressed, where there is no freedom of expression and information, you find out that the media space tends to decline, it becomes smaller, media houses closed down but the irony of what is happening in the country is that while some civil society groups are crying here that freedom of expression is being threatened and in any case we know why they were shouting because they are looking for donors abroad who will send in US dollars for the protection of hate speech, that basically is a selfish thing.
“But in a country where we are expanding the media space, the last time we did, we licensed about 300 radio stations and as I am speaking to you now, this administration is processing almost 500 requests for radio stations. The media space cannot be expanded, if it is being oppressed.
“A lot of our colleagues I have seen them, any editor who loses job today or senior journalist, you will see him set up a digital newspaper and they are doing well. Many of them are prospering which tells you that the media is not in any way constrained in carrying out its constitutional duties”.
