Lai Mohammed: We will not rest until we regulate the social media
Post created on August 19, 2021
Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, says the Muhammadu Buhari administration won’t rest in its fight to regulate social media in Nigeria.
The minister, in an interview with NAN in Washington, on Wednesday, said the dangers of fake news on social media must be taken seriously.
Mohammed also explained that the online media report that he “sneaked out of Nigeria to meet with Twitter executives’’ in the US is fake.
The minister said he came to the US to meet with international media organisations and think-tanks on the achievements of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, and efforts made so far in tackling insurgency, banditry, and all forms of criminality.
Social media platform Twitter has been banned in Nigeria, the administration is pushing a slew of anti-social media bills around the National Assembly and Mohammed has never missed an opportunity to berate fake news merchants who have found in social media a platform for their dubious trade.
“When you talk about fake news and its danger, we need to take it seriously and I am happy that the entire world is now seeing what we saw more than two years ago.
“I can assure you that we will not rest until we regulate the social media, otherwise, nobody will survive it,’’ Mohammed said on a day a news platform accused him of sneaking to the United States for a meeting with Twitter.
The Buhari administration has repeatedly been accused of stifling free speech, suppressing press freedom in Nigeria.
