At a public hearing on Nigeria’s social media bill held in Abuja last month, the voice of Chris Isiguzo, president of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), rang clearly across the room: “This bill…seeks to pigeonhole Nigerians from freely expressing themselves.” The NUJ is “totally opposed” to it, he said.
This strong opposition was echoed by multiple other civil society groups, according to local media reports and a recording of the hearing posted on twitter with the hashtag #SayNoToSocialMediaBill by Paradigm Initiative, a local digital rights organization. By contrast, a Nigerian army representative welcomed the bill for “reasons of national security,” telling the hearing it would supplement an existing cyber warfare command. The local Guardian newspaper reported in 2018 that the command was established to combat fake news.
At the time of publication, it was not clear whether the COVID-19 crisis would impact the timeline for consideration of the bill, which was scheduled to be sent for a third reading by the senate in April. On March 24, Nigeria’s National Assembly began a two week shutdown with possible extension based on the public health response, Mohammed Sani Musa, a senator from Niger State who is sponsoring the bill, told CPJ. False information related to the coronavirus was an example of the need for the legislation, he said.
Nigeria’s protection from media falsehood and manipulation bill 2019 says that individuals who transmit statements that authorities determine to be “false,” likely to “influence the outcome of an election,” or “prejudicial to the security of Nigeria,” may be imprisoned for up to three years or fined up to 300,000 naira (US$844) or both, according to CPJ’s review of the text. Offenders who are not individuals face fines up to 10 million naira ($27,247 USD). Another section of the bill introduces fines for companies who fail to comply with orders to disable Nigerians’ access to content.
Musa told CPJ that the bill was intended to “mitigate the propaganda of fake news” that travels at the “speed of light.” He said it was important in addition to existing cybercrime legislation, though he did not provide specifics. Nigeria’s 2015 cybercrime act has been used to arrest journalists who criticize officials on social media, as CPJ has documented.
Musa told CPJ the bill was guided by online controls in other jurisdictions, including Singapore, the U.K., the EU, and the United Arab Emirates—where a cybercrime law was passed to suppress criticism on social media, observers have told CPJ found strikingly similar language between Singapore’s 2019 protection from oline falsehood and manipulation—which CPJ has condemned and Nigeria’s social media bill, notably i sections denoting prison time for individuals who post “false statements of fact.”
“If there’s a society like Nigeria, we feel imprisonment is necessary,” Musa said, arguing for deterrence as a tool to manage speech online. He was, however, open to the bill being amended or even dropped. “Any bill that is going to infringe on the fundamental freedom of every Nigerian…I would be against it,” he concluded.
CPJ asked four Nigerian journalists what they thought about the bill. Their answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.