The National Broadcasting Commission, NBC has disclosed that Nigeria is among the countries of the world making efforts to regulate how people use social media within its’ territorial boundaries.
This was as the commission stated that it is currently engaging with major social media platforms in a bid to curb the excesses of their users especially young folks.
Speaking with journalists on Friday, the Director, Broadcast Monitoring of the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, Francisca Aiyetan, said the commission regards its plans to regulate social media as a gateway to salvage the lots of many young people who could be misguided if social media is not regulated,
She said, “every country is making efforts to regulate social media, and Nigeria also is making efforts because we know that there are a lot of things to harness from it. But if not regulated, it can also be a platform that will misguide our young people.
“The level we are now is discussing with stakeholders so to agree that, yes, we need to regulate social media and at that level, there should be legislation; there should be strengthening of the law to factor in all the things that are new on the broadcasting and content sharing space.
“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 that we engage the platform owners as a regulator, we engage Google YouTube, and TikTok, so we know the faces behind these platforms.
Recall that the Director-General of the NBC, Balarabe Ilelah had on Tuesday, reportedly disclosed that the commission had sent a regulation bill to the National Assembly while lamenting that the current law does not give NBC the right to control social media.
He described the ills of social media as a “monster.”