Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna state has called for the enactment of a legal framework to ensure the expeditious prosecution of purveyors of fake news and hate speech.
The Governor made the remarks in Kaduna when he received the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, on a courtesy visit, on the sidelines of the 47th National Council on Information, with the theme “Tackling fake news and hate speech to enhance peace and national unity”.
El-Rufai said the Kaduna State Government is establishing a legal framework, beyond the Penal Code, that recognizes the peculiarities of spreading fake news and hate speech with the use of technology.
While commending the Minister for the fight against the twin evils, he recommended that State Governments should be given broader jurisdiction to try offenders, thus putting them at the forefront of the campaign against fake news and hate speech.
“We have fundamental problems,” he began. “First, we need to give state governments and state high courts the jurisdiction to try this because the Federal Government cannot do it alone.
”But beyond that, what we found here in Kaduna State is that the Cyber Crime Act, which is the one that provides a framework for prosecuting people that use Social Media to proliferate fake news, vests jurisdiction in the Federal High Court, so we cannot easily and quickly prosecute those involved, so we have to rely on the Penal Code.
“What we are thinking of doing in Kaduna State is to enact our own legislation against fake news and so on. Right now we have enough in the Penal Code to try people that do that but we need a stronger framework that recognizes the technologies and the processes that are used now more than ever.
“This is a very important issue that you are discussing, Honourable Minister, and I think the programme you launched against fake news in all the Federal Government media is quite commendable and should be sustained,” he added.
In his remarks, the Minister accused the opposition of depending solely on fake news and hate speech in the build-up to the 2019 general elections.
Mohammed said fake news has become the “most potent weapon in the arsenal of the political opposition in view of their inability to take on the Muhammadu Buhari administration because of its great achievements in all spheres.”
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