You mean to muzzle social media via ‘code of practice’, MRA accuses FG

Following Monday’s launch of the ‘Code of Practice for Interactive Computer Service Platforms/Internet Intermediaries’ by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) to define guidelines for interacting on the digital ecosystem, Media Rights Agenda (MRA) has faulted the move, describing it as an attempt to regulate social media through ”backdoor by circumventing legislative process.”

In a statement, yesterday, the group’s Programme Director, Ayode Longe, stated: “The Federal Government is attempting to circumvent the legislative process in favour of a backdoor approach to regulate social media and other Internet platforms.”

He said it was “curious that the government has chosen to use an administrative document to create criminal offences as the document states unequivocally that any platform or Internet intermediary responsible for violating its provisions would be liable to prosecution and conviction.”

Longe insisted that “NITDA’s misuse of the term ‘Code of Practice’ to describe the document is tantamount to acting under false pretences to hoodwink Nigerians into believing that the government is seeking to protect them when its real intention is so, obviously, to control social media and other Internet platforms by compelling them to register with government and muzzle the right to freedom of expression online.”

He contended that the document “is a breach of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and Nigeria’s treaty obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which give everyone the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers.”

To him, “the name is problematic. Although it is termed a code of practice, it is in fact not intended to provide guidance for the implementation of any specific law or regulation.

Rather, it creates criminal offences, which are not contained in any existing law, and an attempt to legitimise them by a vague reference to its enabling Act and other laws that are beyond the remit of any administrative document.”