Saraki reiterates stand on ‘anti-social media’ bill

The President of the Nigerian Senate, Bukola Saraki, on Friday said controversial clauses of the Frivolous Petitions Prohibition Bill, submitted to parliament last year would “not see the light of day”.

The Frivolous Petition Bill being sponsored by Senator Bala Ibn Na’Allah has a clause that seeks to regulate the use of social media and short message service (SMS) in Nigeria.

Saraki had made similar comment on December 9, 2015 on his Twitter handle. He said, “If any part of the bill is found obnoxious or against public interest, it will be expunged during clause by clause consideration of the bill.”

The Contentious part of the bill reads: “Where any person through text message, tweets, WhatsApp or through any social media post any abusive statement knowing same to be false with intent to set the public against any person and or group of persons, an institution of Government or such other bodies established by law shall be guilty of an offence and upon conviction shall be liable to an imprisonment for 2 years or a fine of N2, 000, 000 or both such fine and imprisonment.”

Speaking on the final day of the Social Media Lagos 2016 in Lagos, the Senate President emphasised the growing influence of social media users in Nigeria’s political environment, and encouraged the audience to continue contributing to the development of Nigeria through their dialogue and debate on social media.

“Without the involvement of social media, there is no way that we would have moved from a non-performing government — because now everything is out in the open unlike years ago,” Saraki said.

Saraki went on to commend the online community, calling them the real ‘Chairmen of INEC,’ citing that their crowdsourced election results from polling stations during the general elections, ensured that the manipulation of vote counts was kept to the barest minimum.

“Though we had the numbers,” Saraki said, “It is really thanks to social media that votes counted because you shared the results as they happened.”

Saraki went on to assure the audience at #SMWLagos that in the next few weeks, the calls for an Open National Assembly would be actualised, and Nigerians would get to see the line-item allocations of the National Assembly.

Saraki called for continued cooperation and conversation between the government and the public via social media, and mentioned that following the recent National Assembly Interactive Session with Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) called #NASSEngages, starting in 2017, CSOs would be a part of the budget hearing process.