Anti-social media bill unnecessay — Activist

By Chris Njoku

More condemnations have continued to trail the proposed ‘Frivolous Petitions and Other Matters Connected Therewith Bill’, otherwise known as the anti-social media bill sponsored by Sen. Ibn Na’Allah (APC Kebbi South).

SENATE CHAMBER

A human rights activist and novelist, Mr Efemena Agadama in his condemnation, described the bill as unnecessary maintaining that the laws of the federation on libel, defamation, treason and related laws have clauses that cover the essence of the social media bill. In a statement made available to newsmen, he said the bill if passed into law, would put more lives in danger than envisaged.

Agadama, who is the Director of International Relations, Youth and Conflict Resolution Initiatives, YCRI, said the contents of the bill, have similar contents as the decree 4 of 1984, which was made to protect officials of the military government from public criticisms and discourage the media from its investigative functions.

“But most factual criticisms of the Federal Government on failed policies, rights violations, petitions, corruption, tribalism and nepotism are usually prone to embarrass, ridicule and bring Federal Government into disrepute. As a result, most writers, journalists, social critics and rights crusaders during that draconian military regime were incarcerated.”

He said it was worrisome that after 31 years of that draconian regime, another bill with the same contents as decree 4 was being sponsored and lamented that If the legislative arm of the federal government could conceived such anti-criticism bill to silence opposition and public scrutiny, then non-state actors like terrorists, militants and kidnappers would have been given the green light to silence their critics by taking the laws into their hands.

Agadama who claimed to have been threatened several times by Boko Haram and Niger Delta militants due to his endless campaigns for prosecution of sponsors of murderous violence said; “This portends a grave danger for our democracy already strengthened by the great tolerance shown by former president Goodluck Jonathan who encouraged freedom of expression and passed the Freedom Of Information (FOI) bill.”

The activist noted that the FOI has already reduced the dissemination of false information as experts now have legal rights to solicit for accurate information from government sources, the police and other authoritative sources before publishing. He however, called on the executive and judicial arms to rise against the bill so as to safeguard lives and make the government open to media scrutiny.

Information source: vanguard

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