President Bola Tinubu has reiterated the need to keep regulating social media under the Cybercrimes Act to protect Nigeria’s information ecosystem and citizens from “malicious falsehoods, cyberstalking, identity theft, and other abuses”.
Disclosing this at the maiden State House Press Corps Presidential Dinner on Thursday in Abuja, Mr Tinubu said there was no intention of weakening press freedom or free speech, but that those rights must be exercised responsibly and in a balanced manner to prevent society from being set on fire.
Mr Tinubu said, “The media space is no longer an unregulated frontier. Nigeria has enacted laws, including the Cybercrimes Act and other relevant legislation, to protect citizens from malicious falsehoods, cyberstalking, identity theft, and other abuses that increasingly accompany the digital age. These safeguards are not intended to weaken press freedom. Rather, they exist to protect citizens and preserve the integrity of our information ecosystem.
“While press freedom and free speech remain the bedrock of an open and democratic society, journalists and citizens must also not forget the imperative of balancing rights with responsibility and the duty you hold to society to report and inform with care and accuracy to facts and in a manner that ensures the society is not set on fire.
“The recurring incidents of misinformation, disinformation, fake news, voice and facial cloning and deep fakes are concerning. These are the drawbacks of the social media age. Media practitioners should not be willing couriers of falsehood or unverified information injurious to national security and the nation.”
The president reiterated his commitment to upholding the constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and press freedom as enshrined in Sections 22 and 39 of the Constitution, but warned that “freedom of expression is not freedom to defame. Freedom of the press is not freedom to deliberately mislead”.
Mr Tinubu, who stated that although he has been friends with the media over the years, admits that they are both “adversaries only in the democratic sense, because the media constantly distrusts those in power”, but added that, “in nation-building, we are partners”.
He therefore urged the media to choose facts over falsehood, substance over sensation, and credibility over clickbait, in their endless race to get more followers, likes, and viral outrage, reminding them that the public depends on them not only to report events, but also to separate facts from fiction, truth from speculation, and evidence from opinion.