The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) in Nigeria has announced its plans to regulate social media. Mrs. Francisca Aiyetan, the Director of Broadcast Monitoring at NBC, has revealed that NBC is actively engaging with tech giants such as Google and TikTok as part of their regulatory efforts. The move is aimed at preventing the misuse of these platforms, especially among young people, who are most vulnerable to being misguided.
She said, “Every country is making efforts to regulate social media, and Nigeria is also making efforts because we know that there are many things to harness from it. But if not regulated, it can also be a platform that will misguide our young people.”
She explained that NBC was consulting with stakeholders to agree on regulating social media and to amend the law to cover the new developments in broadcasting and content sharing. She said that NBC had the power and the mandate to regulate social media, but it also needed the technology to do so effectively.
She added, “And then, when you have the power and the enablement by law to do such things, then we can now look at, do we have the way to do it technology-wise? Nevertheless, presently, what we do is engage the platform owners as regulators; we engage Google, YouTube, and TikTok, so we know the faces behind these platforms.
“What we do is escalate whatever we think is threatening or injurious to our people; we escalate to them that we don’t think it’s right; we take it down; and so far, we’ve been working well. Other countries are doing the same; other countries are doing more.”
The regulation of social media has sparked a lot of debate since Balarabe Ilelah, the Director-General of NBC, announced that the regulation bill had been sent to the National Assembly. He made this announcement when he received Mohammed Idris, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, at the NBC headquarters in Abuja earlier in the week.