Again, Senate Moves to Regulate Social Media

Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

Following the initial attempts by the Senate to regulate the social media, which was met with a stiff resistance from Nigerians, the Chairman Senate Committee on ICT and Cybercrime, Senator Abdul Fatai  Buhari has warned that if the social media is allowed to go unregulated, it could cause doom for the nation, especially now that Nigeria is going into the election year.

Buhari, disclosed this in Abuja at the 2018 Legislative-Stakeholder Conference on Cybersecurity, with the theme; “The Implications of Disruptive Technologies on National Security and Economy,” organised by the Senate Committee on ICT and Cybercrime.

To ensure adequate legislative framework ‎to help Nigeria contend with the challenges of global cybercrime, he said the bill to regulate social media activities had scaled through the first reading at the Senate.

Buhari said the committee had received a lot of petitions from Nigerians, especially those that have fallen victims of false accusation through social media, calling on the National Assembly to regulate it.

According to him, “I remember in the beginning of this administration, when we were trying to bring in‎ law to regulate the social media, I could remember what we saw at that time was not palatable.

“But with this new development that everybody is being attacked particularly on false information. What they do is to look at your face and age, and go to any of the social media platforms and write rubbish against the personalities of credible people and nothing happens.”

The Senator added: “Even in the developed world, they regulate the social media. We need to face the reality that if we allow the law to ‎go lose without regulating the social media, it is going to cause doom, particularly now that the country is approaching its election year.

“If developed country like America is crying that their system was hacked during their election, who are we?”
He said Nigeria has an existing Cybercrime Law that was signed by former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015, but stressed that the law was inadequate to contend with the current challenges, hence, the amendment in the area of social media to regulate its activities, which has passed its first reading.

“The Bill has passed through the first reading, it has been listed for second reading and it is still open. With this conference we are holding, some of the ideas‎ that will come from it will be inserted into the Bill to make it richer.

“Most of the data systems of our institutions like the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Customs, Immigration among others are exposed to attacks. Funny enough, we don’t even have data backup to prevent data loss in the event that anything happens to the data, through cyberattacks.

“So, the Bill will come up again immediately after this conference and we will try to push for a second reading, in preparation for the public hearing,” Buhari said.

The Senator emphasised that preventing cyber attacks requires a lot of money, adding that the British government in their last year’s budget, earmarked £7 million, while America budgeted $1 billion to curtail cyber attacks.

“We have one big challenge in this country today, we don’t take precautions, but we are always looking for solutions to address issues. The truth is that when we are able to take precautions, even if the incident will happen, the impact will be minimal, and control becomes easy,” the Senate Committee Chairman on ICT and Cybercrime said.