Last updated on April 21st, 2021 at 07:34 pm
The National Security Adviser (NSA), Babagana Monguno, says social media poses a great challenge as it is being used to incite violence in Nigeria.
The retired Army General who spoke at a workshop on the 2020 national cybersecurity strategy in Abuja on Wednesday, said, “We are witnesses to the use of social media to disseminate subversive content to incite violence and heightened tension, causing unrest and sparking widespread looting and destruction across the country.”
The NSA who represented by Aliyu Mohammed said the social media was used to disseminate inflammatory comments during the #EndSars protest across the country.
Monguno’s latest comment reiterates the plan of the federal government to regulate social media.
Nigeria’s Minister of Information Alhaji Lai Muhammed is one of the leading voices pushing for social media bill.
The move has been described as one of the plans of the APC-led government to gag the use of social media.
“Our country is currently at a turning point in its history, a significant section of our population of over 200 million people are young and entrepreneurs, we are also witnessing a rapid rise in our adoption of the internet in our daily lives,” the NSA said.
The workshop had top military and government officials in attendance. One of them was the Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Abayomi Olonisakin.
CDS who spoke on cyber terrorism said, “Cyberspace has been the main warfare after the lands, sea, air and space has no boundary and hence does not obey conditional rules in warfare.”