The federal government has directed security agencies to tackle the
propagation of hate speech, especially through social media, The Cable reports.
The order was given at a security meeting presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa in Abuja.
Mansur Dan Ali, minister of Defence, had described the trend of hate speech on social media as worrisome.
“Relevant security agencies should as a matter of urgency
tackle the propagation of hate speeches through the social media,
particularly by some notable Nigerians,” Ali said.
The development comes one year after Lai Mohammed, minister of
information, vowed that the current administration would not regulate
social media.
“We have said it before and we want to re-state it: the federal
government has no immediate or long-term plan to stifle press freedom.
Even the social media, with its warts and all, will neither be regulated
nor have its operations tampered with,” he had said in January 2017.
Meanwhile, Dan Ali told state house correspondents that top on the
agenda of the three hours meeting with Buhari was the stringent
conditions imposed by the United States government for the sale of 12
Super Tucano A29 planes and other weapons to Nigeria at the rate of $495
million.
He said US has insisted that payment must be made by February 20,
2018, and that the aircraft can only be available in 2020. Dan Ali also
said that the US government had asked Nigeria not to send its personnel
to understudy the production process of the aircraft as Nigeria did done
in the case of other countries.