The anti-social media bill
About two weeks ago, the Bill for an “Act to Prohibit Frivolous Petitions and Other Related Matters”, now popularly called the Anti-Social Media Bill, passed through second reading in the upper chamber of the National Assembly.
The bill, sponsored by Senator Bala Ibn Na’Allah (APC Kebbi South), seeks to clamp down on “anyone who intentionally propagates false information that could threaten the security of the country or that is capable of inciting the general public against the government through electronic message”. It further proposes “to criminalise anyone disseminating via text message, Twitter, WhatsApp, or any other form of social media an ‘abusive statement’ intending to set the public against any person and group of persons, an institution of government or such other bodies established by law”.
The draft bill mandates a petitioner to swear an affidavit either at the Federal or State High Court and makes it “unlawful to submit any petition, statement intended to report the conduct of any person for the purpose of an investigation, inquiry and or inquest without a duly sworn affidavit in the High Court or the Federal High Court, confirming the content to be true and correct in accordance with the Oaths Act”. It further provides that any person who unlawfully uses, publishes or causes to be published “any petition, complaints not accompanied by a duly sworn affidavit shall be deemed to have committed an offence and upon conviction shall be liable to an imprisonment for a term of two years or fine of N200,000 or both”. The bill also does not spare traditional media as it provides an imprisonment of two years or a fine of N4 million for any newspaper that contravenes its provisions.
To be clear, as a law-abiding corporate citizen, we are not opposed to legislation. However, we do not also subscribe to legislative overkill. We believe that, regarding the issues that the new bill seeks to address, there are already extant provisions of the law that take care of them. Aggrieved parties should utilise such laws to seek redress. We recall that some social media users in the country have recently been charged under those law.
That said, we see the bill as an attempt by the Senate to criminalise free speech, reminiscent of Decree No. 4 of 1984 that prohibited journalists from reporting anything that could embarrass the regime, even if it were true. The bill, no matter how worded, is clearly anti-people, draconian in its provision and goes against all democratic ethos and dictum. The surreptitious manner it was being handled and given accelerated hearing to pass without public notice makes it all the more worrisome, coupled with the Senate president’s “clever” denial that “there was no bill that was brought forward called social media bill”.
The critical question is: are the legislators threatened by the ubiquity and far-reaching impact of the social media and the weapon that it has become in the hands of the electorate? If this is so, then it is most unfortunate. We say this because the now ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is a great beneficiary of the social media. During the last general elections, the party was known to have used the social media to vilify the then Goodluck Jonathan administration and get it voted out of power. Turning around now to want to gag the same social media, to us, amounts to crossing a bridge and turning around to set it ablaze. Are the party and its officials fearful that the very medium they rode to power may be used against them?
Whatever be the case, we must remind the legislators that the urgent task before them – and for which they were elected – is not the abridgement of the rights of citizens to free speech but the enactment of laws that will curb corruption and improve the economy and service delivery, and the performance of their statutory function of oversight on the executive to prevent it from accumulating and exercising untrammelled powers. From the reactions to the bill thus far, it is clear that it is against the wishes of the citizens who elected them to power. Luckily, the president has distanced himself from the proposed bill. We, therefore, advise the Senate to immediately suspend action on the bill and focus on more urgent matters of national importance.
We dare to note that the social media has become a veritable and effective tool in the hands of the people, especially the youth and the middle class, for demanding accountability from elected and appointed public officials in Africa, where government officials are usually not in the habit of being accountable to the people from whom they claim they derive their powers. This new-found medium must be jealously guarded and refined for greater efficiency, and not clamped down.
It is on this note that we call on civil society and other interest groups to rise up to challenge the National Assembly and, if possible, compel it to abandon the ‘anti-people’ path it is attempting to tread. History is not on its side and it cannot win a war against the people.