Nigerians risk being jailed over Social Media Bill, says group

The Concerned Nigerians has warned of the dangers inherent in enacting the Social Media Bill currently before the National Assembly, saying its passage will endanger the lives of Nigerians, silence dissenting opinions and remove citizens’ freedom of expression.

Leader of the group, Deji Adeyanju, in a statement said with the passage of the bill, the Federal Government would have the powers to jail anyone considered as a threat.

He said: “This government had always wanted to restrict social media since it came to power. It all started in 2015 when they introduced an anti-social media bill through a proxy tagged “Frivolous Petitions (Prohibition) Bill 2015” then in 2016 during the Eighth National Assembly but we and several other members of the civil society got it axed with the help of a more patriotic Senate and through protests and online advocacy.

“The irony of this bill is that those who are opposing the use of social media today used the same medium to get into power in 2015.

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

Adeyanju, who spoke on the danger of passing the bill by the Senate, further said: “Over a year ago as I stepped out of Keffi Prison in Nasarawa State, a joint team of Special Task Force Police officers from the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Monitoring Unit and some Army officers arrested me. I was not told the reason they were re-arresting me. Days before this, I was arrested at the Police Force Headquarters in Abuja at a scene of a protest against police partisanship in Nigerian politics and subsequently charged to court for unlawful assembly, nuisance, disturbance of public peace and threat to public security and safety, criminal defamation and derogatory conduct against constituted authority and breach of law but later granted me bail.

“They brought so many printed tweets and posts from Facebook claiming they contravened sections 24 and 25 of the Cybercrime Act of 2015. They then confronted me with a petition written by the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, alleging that I was supporting Boko Haram and demoralising the Nigerian Army and our troops in the North East.

“The officers informed me that I might be charged with terrorism or treason and my response was they should charge me to high heavens if they so wish. I was, thereafter, taken to another police facility where I was kept in a cell with other suspects facing several allegations, including robbery, till the next day when I was charged to court on cybercrime-related matters. The court, however, granted me bail after I had spent some days in Keffi Prison.

“The reason for narrating this in relation to the Social Media Bill is to prepare the minds of Nigerians for what is to come. The proposed Social Media Bill is not anything different from the Cybercrime Act of 2015; it just expands the scope.”