Africast 2016: Panel calls for regulation of social media platforms

A panel of discussants has called for the regulation of social media platforms to safeguard the society from unwholesome contents threatening national security, interpersonal relationship and ethno-religious harmony.
The discussants made the call at the three-day conference of African broadcasters: Africast 2016, which ended in Abuja on Thursday.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the conference, which has as its theme: “Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting: Financing Quality Content,” was the 11th Biennial Conference of African Broadcasters hosted by the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission.
The Chairman of the fifth and final session at the conference, Peter Igoh, gave the summary of the presentations in his closing remarks at the session.
Igoh, a retired Executive Director of Marketing at the Nigerian Television Authority, said it was the general consensus that such regulation had become necessary given the envisaged explosion of contents and broadcast channels when the digital transmission begins next year.
Igoh said that the “intrusion of social media had become a headache” that should be properly managed by the relevant agencies.
He said that the “disruptive influence” of social media is not peculiar to Nigeria, adding that authorities in Britain were also thinking of ways to moderate the social media.
The Lead Presenter, Gregg Odutayo, who presented a paper on “The Producer and the Content in a digital era”, said the NBC code had not taken enough cognisance of the peculiar nature of the social media.
Odutayo, who presented the paper on behalf of his wife, Debbie Odutayo, submitted that “there is something in the content that cannot be absolutely left to the conscience of the viewers and the audience to determine.
Odutayo said: “We need a regulator to censor it.
“The television industry in Nigeria has grown outside the industry initiatives.”
NAN reports that Odutayo’s wife is also the President of Electronic Media Content Owners of Nigeria.
A former acting Director General of FRCN, Kevin Ejiofor, said that “social media had become an instrument of mass destruction” against the government and people in government.
He said that the social media in Nigeria had also become avenue for exchange of crude abuses provoking ethnic, religious and other primordial sentiments in the society.
Ejiofor also said that the NBC should canvass for an amendment to the Act establishing it so that it would be able to cope with the task of moderating the social media.

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