Amnesty Worldwide in Nigeria has warned that an try by the Nigerian authorities to manage using social media may hamper freedom of expression.
The warning got here after Femi Gbajamiala, President Bola Tinuubu's chief of employees, mentioned on Friday that “social media is a menace” and have to be regulated.
“The Social Media Regulation Invoice that Nigerian politicians are strongly pushing for might be topic to imprecise and broad interpretations and can impose extremely harsh penalties for merely criticizing the authorities,” Amnesty Worldwide Nigeria mentioned in a press release.
Amnesty famous that the 'regulation' of social media would threaten important opinion, satire, public dialogue and political commentary.
It added that the rules may very well be “simply abused” to punish critics of presidency insurance policies and actions, and mentioned the federal government may arbitrarily shut down the web and limit entry to social media.
“Nigeria's regulation of social media? Social media customers might be punished for freely expressing their opinions. The federal government can arbitrarily shut down the web and limit entry to social media. Criticizing the federal government might be punishable by jail sentences of as much as three years.” it added.
The Nigerian authorities submitted the “Safety from Web Falsehood and Manipulation Invoice 2019”, often known as the Social Media Invoice, to the Senate for debate in November 2019.
The invoice aimed to criminalize using social media to unfold false or malicious data. It might have given authorities arbitrary powers to close down components of the web and limit entry to social media.
In June 2021, the federal government of Nigeria suspended the operations of social networking service Twitter for nearly six months till January 2022.
