From the Nazis to Stalinists to Maoists, tyrants have always started out supporting free speech, just as the Nigerian Islamic Marxist party commonly refereed to as APC did during GEJ era. The APC support for free speech is easy to understand. Speech is vital for the realization of their goals of command, control and confiscation. The right to say what they please is their tool for indoctrination, propagandizing and proselytization. Almost immediately after gaining power, free speech became a liability alongside other tenets of democracy. The suppression of free speech began with the gagging of the media which was ordered by the current Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, to only report on state approved narratives of the ongoing war in the northeast. A virtual smokescreen was created suppressing any factual account of the actual war on insurgency. Controlling the media was easy as the APC govt could simply cancel their operating licence, arrest and detain (indefinitely) Journalists and editorial board members of any erring news network. This was Decree 4 all over again! As the actual accuracy of the news article in question wasn't up for debate but rather the negative backlash and embarrassment it may cause the govt. But then there was social media. Nigerians had began to turn away from major media outlets preferring the more independent social media narrators. Lai Mohammed knows to well the power of Social media as his party hired an army of online shills to sway Nigerians towards seeing a confirmed sectional bigot and tyrant as the only solution to ending the rot in the system which I must add here they overblew out of proportion so as to present Nigeria under GEJ as being on the brink of collapse.


You only regulate what you can control. With social media this is easier said than done and so almost immediately, the Buhari govt began a viscous campaign and lobby to regulate and punish social media dissenters by sponsoring a bill to that effect at the Natiional assembly while pushing the Obama "Fake News" narrative to discredit non-complying social media news outlets. They must be suppressed! The fallout of this is the death of well over a hundred Nigerian soldiers stationed in the NE.

If the media had access and freedom to report on the war in the NE, won't Nigerians have demanded for the sack of the service chiefs or at least demand for better working and living conditions for our soldiers stationed in the NE?

Censorship is antithetical to democracies. It is only useful in authoritarian Orwellian states where truth is more dangerous than govt propaganda and such is needed as a consolidating tool by those who wield the big stick. Lai Mohammed's censorship tenure has since made him the least credible individual not only to occupy the exalted position as Minister of Information but also within Nigerian society at large. How can the Minister of Information have so little or no credibility among Nigerians and you still keep him in office?