Nigerian newspapers
expressed their disdain for the bills in their respective editorials on
Tuesday.
Another round of media
solidarity, this time as editorials in major dailies in Nigeria, has followed
Monday’s widely circulated advertorial calling on the government to shut down
two controversial media bills at the National Assembly.
Nigerian newspapers expressed
their disdain for the bills in their respective editorials on Tuesday, saying,
while the media is not averse to regulation, it wants it done without
undermining its independence.
This largely explains
why the Nigeria Press Council (NPC) and the National Broadcasting Commission
(NBC) amendment bills have been subject of full-throated backlash particularly
from media groups who described the proposed legislations as an attempt to
stifle the press.
The bills do not offer
the independent regulatory possibility the press said it was open to, the
newspapers said in their editorials.
Rather, it serves into
the hands of the government – which has a history of arbitrarily censoring and
fining broadcast media that air programmes it disagrees with – by handing
sweeping prosecutorial powers to the president and the minister of information.
The Nigerian Press
Council (NPC) bill for one gives the president the power to appoint the
chairman of the council’s board as well as other members of the board upon the
recommendation of the information minister.
Likewise, the
executive has sought the National Assembly’s cooperation to empower the
National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), through its amendment bill, to wield
regulatory powers over “all online media” as it already does with broadcast
media.
The National Assembly
has said the bills would “remove bottlenecks affecting (media) performance and
make it in tune with current realities in regulating the press.”
The spokesperson of
the Senate called the advertorial against the bills a blanket media ambush.
House Speaker Femi Gbajabiamila has also said the legislation was proposed in
good faith.
“We cannot let every
institution run amok, the executive is regulated, the judiciary to a large
extent is regulated, the legislature is regulated,” Mr Gbajabiamila said.
“Institutions are meant to be regulated, there is not one institution that is
above the law.”
The proposed amendment
to section 2 of the NBC would continue to make the NBC the accuser, the
prosecutor and the judge in its own case.
But Guardian Newspaper
said it was curious to know why “an unelected body” such as NBC should be
conferred with “the power to determine the public interest.”
“The media is not
averse to regulations and sanctions against fake news and hate speech,” the
newspaper added, “as long as they do not erode media independence and do not
seek to criminalise journalism or undermine constitutional guarantees of
freedom of expression.”
It said it believed
that doing otherwise would roll Nigeria back “to the obnoxious military era of
the 1980s” which will ultimately force “our democracy into darkness.”
“The international
trend, which Nigeria should emulate, is in the direction of peer regulation and
constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press. The trend also includes
removing from the statute all laws that criminalise freedom of expression.”
Vanguard Newspaper
argued that the proposed “satanic…toxic” laws “have no redeeming features” as
the sweeping power it gives the executive would “create a monster Minister of
Information with the media as his footstool.”
Punch Newspaper saw
the laws in no different light because they would “pave the way for the
government to seize control of the media space and subjugate the free flow of
information to the whims and direction of the state and its officials.”
It described the
enablers within the parliament as persons with anti-democratic and dictatorial
identity who seek to “asphyxiate freedom of the press and erode the fundamental
rights of Nigerians to free expression.”
The newspapers urged
the proponents of the bills to acquaint themselves with Nigeria’s turbulent
political history and the roles of the press right from the colonial era
through to the military era and to the eventual actualisation of democracy.
They charged the
National Assembly and the Executive to back down on their proposed clampdown on
free speech and censorship of the press, adding that the press cannot be
repressed without a democratic government losing its legitimacy.
Meanwhile, it appeared
the sponsor of the bills, Segun Odebunmi, has buckled under media pressure
demanding the bills to be quashed as he told Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily on
Tuesday that the House committee tending to the bills has “suspended it for
more consultation to happen.”
0 Comments