FG to sanitize social media, says Lai Mohammed – TheNigerialawyer

The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has
confirmed that the Federal Government is going to sanitize social
media.

He said the regulation will, however, be in line with global
best practices as obtainable in the United Kingdom, Singapore and
other jurisdictions.

He said the government has no plans to gag the press or stifle
the media as being insinuated.

Mohammed made the clarifications at a briefing in Abuja a few
minutes ago.

He said the government will never allow anarchists to take over
the nation’s airwaves and media space.

He said: “Gentlemen, since we launched our reform of the
broadcast industry, many Nigerians have reached out to us,
demanding that we also look into how to sanitize the Social Media
space. “I can assure you that we are also working on how to inject
sanity into the Social Media space which, today, is totally out of
control

”No responsible government will sit by and allow fake news and
hate speech to dominate its media space, because of the capacity of
this menace to exploit our national fault lines to set us against
each other and trigger a national conflagration.

“That is why we will continue to evolve ways to tackle fake news
and hate speech until we banish both.

“Therefore, Gentlemen, we once again seek your support for our
efforts to banish fake news and hate speech from our media
space.”