The Federal House of Representatives has said that it is not regulating social media in Nigeria, but rather, it is refining its operations to meet global best practices.
Spokesman of the House and member representing Bende Federal Constituency, Hon. Benjamin Okezie Kalu stated this in an exclusive interview with Rave TV which was monitored by Igbere TV.
The lawmaker also defended the controversial guidelines earlier released by management of the National Assembly for journalists covering its sittings, which caused uproar, before it was suspended.
He said the National Assembly, particularly the House of Representatives, was poised at sanitizing the social media to curtail the spread of fake news in the country.
According to him, the social media, as an instrument and tool for national development, should be well organized to encourage national peace, unity, and social development.
Ben Kalu said, “Our relationship with the media right now is what we want to improve on, it is a partnership we are looking forward to refining because we believe in the media and the role it plays in government, especially as provided by the fundamental objectives and directive principles that you find in Chapter II of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended).
“They have a role they play in government. If you look at chapter 2.14 of the Legislative Agenda of the current 9th Assembly, we view the media as not just a source of news, but as an instrument and a tool for national development. We view media as an instrument that will help in national unity. We view media as a tool that will help us to achieve peace if well organized. It is based on these that the 9th Assembly is determined to repurpose the media, to have a paradigm shift from what it use to be to what it ought to be.
“Talking about what it use to be, within the political environment, you have dissemination of propaganda more than fact-based journalism. We want to encourage the fact-based journalism because it will encourage national development and progressive social change”.
On the issue of accreditation guidelines issued by NASS management, “you are aware that we have over 1,000 media sources in Nigeria when we put the traditional and new media together. But not all are genuine. Some are genuine, others are just there to disseminate fake news and propaganda.”
Asked how the National Assembly plan to curtail fake news in Nigeria, the lawmaker said, “fake news, what we call “information disorder”, is not new to our society. It is based on rumour and propaganda and has always been a problem in governance. Through the social media technologies that we have now, fake news has been on the increase. In fact, it is like a plague. It has reached a malignant scale at the moment where main genuine source of news are becoming victims, especially now that we have the Artificial Intelligence (AI) where news are generated through the AI before you know it it’s everywhere. You can hardly beat the speed of AI because the speed is much.
“Fake news is not just peculiar to Nigeria alone, it is a global phenomenon. Recall during the United States election in 2016, fake news was a major issue. Just recently, Mark Zuckerberg was reinvited by the US congress because of the fake news that were generated using his platform, Facebook. Now as legislators, we need to do something to help this. And that we can only do through legislative actions. We have also fallen victim of this fake news. We ought to make efforts to change this. In doing that, as legislators we intend to review the law to make sure we fill in the gap in the gaps regards to regulating media practices in Nigeria with the objective of amending them to meet global best practices. And we intend to work with various relevant stakeholders and agencies in the industry to manage the role of social media, especially relating to this fake news out there. We also want to engage the Press Corps of the National Assembly and give them proper training so that the quality of their reportage will increase better than what it use to be. We are also going to support the initiative of the government as regards to media literacy campaign by the National Orientation Agency. We are supporting that because we want Nigerians to become critical news consumers.”
Asked if the recent increment of penalty fine for media violators from N500,000 to N5 million by the Nigeria Broadcast Corporation (NBC) was part of measures to checkmate fake news in Nigeria, Hon. Benjamin Kalu said it was within the powers of the NBC to effect such increment.
“You know there is an Act that is governing them known as the National Broadcast Commission Act. And this act is the enabling Act that establishes the body known as the NBC. And they are authorized to engage in regulation of the media as provided for in that Act by Section 2(1) paragraph H. The body is enabled to regulate the industry and put such fines as provided for in paragraph “N”. So they are acting within the Act that establishes them. As you know, our responsibility at the National Assembly is to make laws, while the execution of such laws lies on the executive. The issue of fake news is a serious issue because we have about 400 infractions of the National Broadcast Code which ranges from the fake news in question to hate speeches and so on. So there is need to sanitize the environment so we can meet the global best practices. Our own is that if there is any infractions, the Legislature is not incline to interfere with the responsibility of the executive. We only do that when the interest of the general public is at stake, or if the Constitution has been breached. Right now, there is an outcry, because we have been inundated with calls since this increase was made. But you see, there is nothing we can do than to work with the executive to achieve what the law has allowed them to do”, he said.
