LAST week, the military caused considerable consternation in the polity when it declared that it had begun monitoring the social media for anti-government and anti-military statements. According to the Director of Defence Information, Major-General John Enenche, the move was informed by the misinformation on the social media, which could jeopardise the national unity. Enenche added: “Imagine when the president came back and addressed the nation, not up to 30 minutes later, a fake speech of the Commander-In-Chief was being circulated. In order to do what? To derail the people. If you are not very sharp and if you didn’t listen to the speech or you don’t have a copy of it like I had it almost immediately, you wouldn’t know. So, looking at it from that perspective, it is a challenge everywhere.”
Was the timing of the statement merely fortuitous? Enenche’s comments came less than 48 hours after President Muhammadu Buhari stated in a national broadcast that some of the discussions on the social media which took place in his absence crossed the line and left him distressed. It is certainly not difficult to see that the Director of Defence Information was influenced by President Buhari’s disposition to national affairs. After spending over 100 days in the United Kingdom attending to a yet undisclosed ailment, the president had addressed the nation in rather unflattering terms, declaring, rather strangely, that the issues agitating the minds of most Nigerians had already been settled. Against this backdrop, Major-General Enenche’s statement immediately stirred the hornet’s nest.
Ironically, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honourable Yakubu Dogara, had recently lamented the seeming militarisation of the country’s democracy, deploring the fact that the military were operating in 28 flashpoints across the country and calling for a reversal of the situation. But Dogara’s qualms apparently did not bother the Federal Government. And if the statement by the Director of Defence Information did anything, it was to give ample indication that the military would henceforth be even more entrenched in the ‘monitoring’ of the nation’s democracy. This is indeed a troubling development.
Quite naturally, Nigerians have been berating the military’s statement. Truth be told, neither the military nor indeed the Federal Government has any business trying to circumscribe the right of Nigerians to free speech under the guise of monitoring anti-government or anti-military statements on the social media. In any case, as pointed out by many experts in law, the military’s declared intention clearly violates the law that set it up, its primary responsibility being to defend Nigeria’s territorial integrity. And as pointed out by an advocacy group, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), “Classifying legitimate exercise of freedom of expression as ‘hate speech’ is counter-productive. In exercising their rights to freedom of expression and privacy, Nigerians should be allowed to speak the truth to those in power and stand up for their rights. To monitor Nigerians’ access to social media solely on the basis that it may be used to express views critical of the government or the political/social system espoused by the government is entirely incompatible and inconsistent with constitutional guarantees and Nigeria’s international human rights obligations and commitments.”
Indeed, as we have pointed out in previous editorials, while national security transcends the ‘security’ of the government in power, it has been used as a weapon over time to clamp down or legitimate dissent and to perpetrate infamy. Nowhere does the Nigerian constitution limit free speech, except where it threatens public order, public security and the interest of the citizenry and the nation. And the military is clearly not the arbiter even in such situations. We urge the government to be highly circumspect in its operations because history has shown that when civilians militarise politics, the military becomes the expert. And it is not exactly averse to power. Why indeed should the military be monitoring citizens’ free speech in a democracy? The impression should not continue to be given that Nigeria is now effectively a police state. It is neither conducive to development nor even the national security which the government is justly concerned about.
To counter false narratives on the social media or elsewhere, the government should not just consistently provide counter narratives; it must ensure that it conducts its operations transparently and responsibly. Rumour and falsehood will continue to thrive when the government fails to ensure effective communication with the citizenry. Besides, in December 2016, the Buhari government launched the Federal Government Information App (FGIAPP) to update Nigerians on its activities. According to the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, “The government is doing so much, yet people keep saying they do not know because we are not communicating through the right channel. The new app will bridge the gap by using the social media to tell the world what the government is doing.” Could the government have failed in its avowed resolve? That would not be the fault of Nigerians.
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