"The Social Media Bill if passed might give the government an opportunity to silence people"

A campaign against the Social Media Bill tagged “National Conference on Shrinking Civic Space” held today at Kairos Hub, Lekki, Lagos with guest appearances from MI Abaga, Banky W, Kate Henshaw, Osas Ighodaro, Dotun, Chigurl, Beverly Osu, Lynxx, Josh2funny, Bellokreb, Dija, Jeff Bankz and Folu Storms.

Meaningful change comes when people lend their voices to a cause affecting society. When individuals are quiet about an anomaly, it simply means they are comfortable and accept the situation just as it is.

The event was organized by Nigerian rapper MI Abaga and supported by TASCK (An NGO which holds government accountable to their citizens) and OSIWA (The Open Society Initiative for West Africa – A West African organization that promotes democratic values).

Speaking at the conference, the Nigerian musician who doubles as a politician Banky W noted that ”The Social Media Bill is redundant because there’s already a law against cybercrime that has already been used to lock people up. Now this bill is coming to cast that opportunity on the rest of us, on everybody who ever uses social media.

This bill if passed into law would give the government an opportunity, probably in a case like Nigeria, to silence dissenting voices, I mean, for instance, not everybody in our police force is bad, I’m a strong believer that we do have good police officers, but we have enough issues with the police, with SARS, with the way power has been abused on our streets, with the number of young people that are maimed and beaten and locked up and taken advantage of, for us to now turn around and give them even more power on the internet, so that the police becomes a judge and jury on what is deemed appropriate content online. It’s just too much danger.”

According to Banky, ”There was a public hearing in Abuja yesterday, the bill had already gone through the first hearing in the Senate, it had gone through the second one and yesterday, they gave the public a chance to come and speak about it, now luckily for us, over 60 people, in a 3-hour session, took our national assembly to task and I think they deserve a round of applause, Nigerians, stakeholders in the media entertainment and of the over 60 people, only 2 spoke in favour of this bill passing, it was an overwhelming majority that stood on the right side of history and said this bill cannot be allowed to pass.”

He further stated that ”My guess, it’s an estimate based on the news and where the conversation is in the senate is that this bill is probably dead, its probably going to go away, but now we have the responsibility to put the nail in the coffin. We were not able to go to Abuja to be part of this public hearing, this social media that they are trying to quiet down, it is time for us to make some noise on that same social media. 

As a generation, I would prefer for us to get to a place where we’re not waiting for an MI or a Banky or a Chigurl or Lynxx or Dotun only, let each person make a video and post it because guess what, you know 10, 20 or 50 people. Let us get to a point where a senator wakes up and they turn on their phone and they are getting hit with message after message after tweets, after posts, after videos not just from celebrities but from every member of this generation that says this my voice that you’re trying to silence, we will not allow it to pass, let it get to a place where we get to some sense of personal responsibility in what is going on.”

”your representative or senator’s contact information is public knowledge. They have emails and contacts they are supposed to declare by law so that the constituents can get a hold of them. How many of us know who our representatives are? talkless of taking the email and writing to them or making a post about this. Let’s get hundreds of thousands of young people recording videos of themselves and saying hey my representative is Jide Obanikoro, Honourable Jide Obanikoro, I’m a constituency in Eti-Osa and I don’t want you to vote in favour of this bill because it’s going to come up for a third reading. Let these people feel that when they do this, they will be going against thousands of people in their constituency because if there’s anything that they fear more than losing their constituency, it’s losing their job to make that money.” the actor further stated.

The 38-year-old said ”I feel we’ve been presented an opportunity to take this conversation a step further. If this bill by God’s grace goes away, do we return to business as usual? I ran for a seat in this same Eti-Osa constituency, I didn’t win the seat but imagine if we do, or if there were like minds like this representing us in the national assembly, the policies that will develop or derail our country and democracy, that’s where they are, that’s why I ran for a seat in NASS so that at least there’s a person there in their private conversations, speaking on behalf of young Nigerians, 2023 is coming, I’m not campaigning, I want to plant a seed in the minds of this generation, let’s even know that maybe we don’t have enough to overturn the Gubernatorial seats and presidency which is always won with 15, 16 million votes, it takes a lot of structure and funding.”

”In the national assembly, my seat in Eti-Osa was won with 23,000 votes, from Obalende to Lekki, VI, Ikoyi, Ajah to Sangotedo and we didn’t have 23,000 people to say let’s get this representative seat. In 2019 we disrupted the political status quo so in 2023, let’s dethrone some people, let’s look at the country and pick 40 places that need 20,000, 25,000, 10,000, 40,000 votes to become a voice and let’s get like-minded people in the national assembly. 

A good national assembly can handcuff a bad president and put in policies that will work in favour of this generation, let’s put influencers in our national assembly, it doesn’t even have to be me, we just need people that are going in there that are going to vote in policies that will favour us and put us back on the road where we need to be. 

As a young person, don’t tell me you care about our society if you do not get your voter’s card, we don’t need everybody because not everybody is good, we just need enough people so let us take personal responsibility. This last election I told my staff in EME that if you don’t get your voter’s card, I will withhold your salary, that’s how drastic and radical we need to be, make sure everybody in your family and circle of influence does the same.”

”In 2023 let’s dethrone some people, let’s teach them a lesson they will never forget. Yesterday was International Women’s day and the gender equality bill didn’t make it past the second reading but it’s the social media bill that was matching on it’s way to 3rd reading. Do you know that our National Assembly at a time when so many young people are unemployed and uneducated, they are in favour of spending 37billion on fixing their office building and we are all here? 

They don’t pass gender equality bill but they want to pass Social Media Bill, and another bill that has made it through the second reading is the bill to give themselves immunity, yes, so there’s a bill they have proposed that states that when they are in the national assembly, you can’t even prosecute them, so senator Elisha can go and slap somebody else and you can’t do anything about it, if they pass the Immunity bill, and Social Media Bill, you can’t prosecute them, you now can’t even talk, and this is who we are allowing to lead us and make policies. Banky stated.

Conclusively the award-winning singer disclosed that ”

A senator married a 13-year-old in this same country and then we talk about the rights of the child and gender-based violence and education and healthcare. We disrupted in 2019, please for God sake, for goodness sake, let’s dethrone some people in 2023, let’s pay attention if you vote against gender equality, we are watching you if you vote against spending money on cars and then you leave our educational system to be what it is, we’re watching you. 

And they need to know that in every constituency in 2023 there are enough young people to make a difference, I’m not even concerned, let the people that are going to fight for presidency fight. What just happened in the news, it’s a tale of two leaders in Kano, one leader is on tape collecting thousands of dollars, another one is on tape talking about poverty and education, healthcare, children and gender equality and corruption in governance, which one lost his job? this is the country we have created when we sit down in silence. 

I pray that those days are gone, we disrupted in 2019, 2023 let us dethrone.”

Anti-social Media Bill was introduced by the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on 5 November 2019 to criminalize the use of social media in peddling false or malicious information. The original title of the bill is ‘Protection from Internet Falsehood and Manipulations Bill 2019’. It was sponsored by Senator Mohammed Sani Musa from the largely conservative northern Nigeria with 85 per cent illiteracy with low internet penetration and social media activities.