The Senate’s Anti-Social Media Bill is an Act of Inter-Generational Warfare By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu – TheNigerialawyer

Senator Mohammed Sani Musa’s anti-social media bill now making
its way through Nigeria’s upper legislative chamber in the Senate
is worse than a throwback to the worst years of Nigeria’s
experience of military rule. It is a hubristic act of
inter-generational warfare that must be resisted and defeated. A
Senate comprising essentially an analogue generation, whose average
age exceeds Nigeria’s life expectancy by about 30%, seeks to
liquidate the only means of expression left for a digital
generation whose analogue rulers have afflicted with little choice
and no hope. A cross-party effort, this bill is evidence of how
elite consensus in Nigeria, wherever it happens, is both
self-serving and irresponsible. Rather than start a war that it
cannot win, the Senate should be well advised to withdraw this bill
and seek to influence digital content through good leadership and
positive example. It can still do so.

On 20 November 2019, in Nigeria’s upper legislative chamber, the
Senate, the “Protection from Internet Falsehoods and Manipulation
and Other Related Matters Bill”, successfully navigated second
reading. The Senate has now committed the bill to its Committee on
Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters.

The sponsor of the Bill is Senator Mohammed Sani Musa, of the
ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) representing Niger East in
the north-central. In the debate on the Senate floor, Senator Sani
Musa received ample support from Elisha Abbo, the woman-battering,
young Senator of the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP),
representing Adamawa North in north-east Nigeria, and Abba Moro,
also from the PDP representing Benue South in the north-central. In
his last major public service role as Interior Minister, Mr. Moro
presided over the culpable homicides involving the death of many
young Nigerians in a phantom hire for jobs in the Immigration
Service in March 2014, for which he proved incapable of empathy or
compassion. Also supporting the Bill is Gobir Ibrahim Abdullahi of
the APC, representing Sokoto East in north-west Nigeria.

Senator Sani Musa’s bill is not the only one on the books of the
Senate at the moment seeking to eviscerate social media and free
expression in Nigeria. His colleague from the neigbouring Niger
North Senatorial District, Aliyu Sai Abdullahi, Baraden Borgu, is
also single mindedly pushing “A Bill for an Act to Provide for the
Prohibition of Hate Speeches (sic) and for Other Related
Matters.” This latter bill proposes to create an “Independent
National Commission for the Prohibition of Hate Speeches
(sic)”.  In its earlier incarnation, Senator Sabi’s
bill also included a provision for death penalty for what he calls
“hate speeches” (sic). That will be a subject for another
day.

Senator Sani Musa’s anti-social media bill is the latest in
various attempts by successive administrations in Nigeria to social
media their exclusive mouthpiece or, if they fail, shut it down.
Previous attempts in 2014 and 2017 failed.

Senator Sani Musa’s bill is an awful cut-and-paste job. In every
essential respect, the bill is a bad copy of Singapore’s Protection
from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act No. 18 of 2019, signed
into law on 3 June, which entered into force on 2 October, 2019. It
comprises 36 sections, just a little over half of the 62 sections
found in its Singaporean ancestor. Characteristic of Nigerian
politicians, however, the author of the bill and his distinguished
senatorial supporters are not interested in copying Singapore’s
experience of decent and effective government. Rather, they want to
extinguish in Nigerians any capacity to complain about a pattern of
misrule that ensures that we can never dream of the kinds of things
that the people of Singapore take for granted.

But this Bill is worse than merely a bad import from Singapore
in a season when Nigeria’s borders are closed. In essentially
seeking to re-enact the Public Officers (Protection against False
Accusation), Decree, Number 4 of 1984, it clearly returns Nigeria
to an era that is both forgettable and best forgotten.

Issued by the military in 1984, Decree No. 4 purported to punish
any false report about the government, (then as now, headed by
Muhammadu Buhari), which brought or was intended to bring officials
of the military government into disrepute or ridicule. It
substantially drew upon the Public Officers (Protection against
False Accusation) Decree No. 11 of 1976, which also purported to
punish allegedly false reports linking the then military regime or
any of its officers with corruption or malfeasance. Decree No. 11
of 1976 was designed to separate the military regime of Murtala
Mohammed/Olusegun Obasanjo from the scandal-ridden last years of
its predecessor, the regime of Yakubu Gowon, whom they overthrew in
July 1979. In one essential respect, however, Decree No. 4 of 1984
was different from and harsher than Decree No. 11 of 1976 – truth
was no defence under Decree No. 4.

This is where Senator Sani Musa’s bill takes its inspiration
from. Contrary to its title, the bill is far from solely or even
substantially about Internet falsehoods and manipulation.  The
bill proposes two broad categories of offences. First, there are
offences for which truth may be a defence, such as the offence of
doing an “act in or outside Nigeria in order to transmit in Nigeria
a statement knowing or having reason to believe that it is a false
statement of fact.” Against a charge for this offence, for
instance, it may be a defence to plead that the statement in
question was in fact true or reasonably believed to be true. The
number of possible offences for which this defence may be available
under the bill is, however, miniscule.

Second, and very importantly, for most of the offences under
Senator Sani Musa’s bill, just as with Decree No. 4, truth is no
defence. Quite clearly, it is impossible to legislate against
falsehood by sending truth into exile.

Like Decree No. 4, this bill creates nebulous crimes in
open-ended, subjective language, such as statements “likely to be
prejudicial to the security of Nigeria or any part thereof”.

The crime of making a statement “prejudicial to public health,
public safety, public tranquility or public finance” can be used,
for instance, to jail any citizen for criticising a thieving
politician.

The bill also proposes to criminalise statements that are likely
to “influence the outcome of an election to any office”. This
provision effectively would prohibit digital campaigns by
opposition parties because all campaign statements made digitally
are designed to influence election outcomes. It’s a charter for a
single-party state and an end to political pluralism.

The clincher is the provision that seeks to punish statements
likely to “diminish public confidence in the performance of any
duty or function of, or in the exercise of any power by the
government.” Under this, anyone who calls out government when it is
not performing is liable to be jailed for a felony.

The punishment under this bill could be anything for up to three
years or 300,000 Naira. The people most likely to be jailed are
tech-savvy young people for whom the digital space is both
livelihood and political oxygen.

There are many more notable things about this bill, not the
least of which is the lack of federal character in the list of its
distinguished advocates. Rightly or wrongly, the fact that its most
ardent supporters come from one part of the country feeds an
unhealthy narrative that contradicts the claim of its sponsors to
being concerned about healing Nigeria’s deepening divisions.

In reality, Senator Sani Musa’s bill is a criminal mis-normer.
It has little to do with Internet falsehoods or manipulation.
Rather, it seeks to throttle active citizenship in Nigeria and to
punish truth telling to people like these Senators who are in power
today.

This bill is also a threat to entrepreneurship and can be used
to shut down most digital start-ups.

If this bill passes, the last citizen left in Nigeria will not
even be afforded the luxury of turning out the lights or whistling
in the darkness. This is why Nigeria’s young people must rally
together and tell these senators to stuff their sabres of
inter-generational warfare.

A co-convenor of Nigeria Mourns, Odinkalu
works with the Open Society Foundations and writes in his personal
capacity.