Following the initial attempts by the Senate to regulate the social media, which was met with a stiff resistance from Nigerians, the Chairman Senate Committee on ICT and Cybercrime, Senator Abdul Fatai Buhari has warned that if the social media is allowed to go unregulated, it could cause doom for the nation, especially now that Nigeria is going into the election year.

Buhari, disclosed this in Abuja at the 2018 Legislative-Stakeholder Conference on Cybersecurity, with the theme; “The Implications of Disruptive Technologies on National Security and Economy,” organised by the Senate Committee on ICT and Cybercrime.

To ensure adequate legislative framework ‎to help Nigeria contend with the challenges of global cybercrime, he said the bill to regulate social media activities had scaled through the first reading at the Senate.

Buhari said the committee had received a lot of petitions from Nigerians, especially those that have fallen victims of false accusation through social media, calling on the National Assembly to regulate it.

According to him, “I remember in the beginning of this administration, when we were trying to bring in‎ law to regulate the social media, I could remember what we saw at that time was not palatable.

“But with this new development that everybody is being attacked particularly on false information. What they do is to look at your face and age, and go to any of the social media platforms and write rubbish against the personalities of credible people and nothing happens.”

The Senator added: “Even in the developed world, they regulate the social media. We need to face the reality that if we allow the law to ‎go lose without regulating the social media, it is going to cause doom, particularly now that the country is approaching its election year.

“If developed country like America is crying that their system was hacked during their election, who are we?”
He said Nigeria has an existing Cybercrime Law that was signed by former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015, but stressed that the law was inadequate to contend with the current challenges, hence, the amendment in the area of social media to regulate its activities, which has passed its first reading.

“The Bill has passed through the first reading, it has been listed for second reading and it is still open. With this conference we are holding, some of the ideas‎ that will come from it will be inserted into the Bill to make it richer.

“Most of the data systems of our institutions like the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Customs, Immigration among others are exposed to attacks. Funny enough, we don’t even have data backup to prevent data loss in the event that anything happens to the data, through cyberattacks.

“So, the Bill will come up again immediately after this conference and we will try to push for a second reading, in preparation for the public hearing,” Buhari said.

The Senator emphasised that preventing cyber attacks requires a lot of money, adding that the British government in their last year’s budget, earmarked £7 million, while America budgeted $1 billion to curtail cyber attacks.

“We have one big challenge in this country today, we don’t take precautions, but we are always looking for solutions to address issues. The truth is that when we are able to take precautions, even if the incident will happen, the impact will be minimal, and control becomes easy,” the Senate Committee Chairman on ICT and Cybercrime said.

http://www.mcebisco.com.ng/2018/07/again-senate-moves-to-regulate-social.html

GOOD DEVELOPMENT

This is the least of our problems.

I thought some people said 'this is the best NA'. Kia! Imagine, na Social media be their concern when People just dey Kill 'Men' for 'Cow' anyhow...

Abegi, make una find better thing so about the Insecurity joor.

More measures and policies in preventing cybercrime in the country should rather be enacted.

Its about time they do something about it, I fully support the move in view of so many fake news and speeches of hate and incitement that abound the Nigerian cyberspace - especially from the potopoto Republicans who seem to have nothing but hateful contributions.

salamrusdie you are finished....make yourself ready for nsalla soup at the bottom 0f the ocean......

This people are stupid! I can see what they're trying to do here and it will work because Nigerians are dumb (just check the very first comment by a zombie). They're trying to market this wicked plan by claiming that it with will improve cyber security. Fa fa fa,foul!

Regulating social media he's talking about and cybercrime shouldn't be in the same sentence. Regulating media as mentioned here means the FG will use DSS to pick you up if you write things against Buhari and the ruling party as elections draw near (remember all the propaganda spewed against the Jonathan government during the runup to 2015). Regulating media means infringing on the right to speech of the people. They're not targeting it at improving any cyber security. Again,he should not use western nations to market his callous plans. The countries I can recall regulate media are China,North Korea,Cameroon.
China so you can't track their affairs.
North Korea so you can't track the retrogression in the country.
Cameroon - Against the marginalized Anglo speaking South.


So you see,their focus is on the election coming up next year.

It can only come from an Aboki..nothing else.

For Herdsmen's sake.