The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has appealed to the Federal Government to review the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) regulation on web based broadcast medium.
CITAD’s Senior Programme Officer, Malam Isa Garba, made the appeal at a Press conference held at the centre in Kano on Monday.
“So far, online radio and television stations across the country’s cyberspace are innovative in their operations and provided means of living to numerous Nigerians, apart from providing interesting content,’’ he said.
CITAD said Nigeria’s online population is growing by the day and it has been innovative in online broadcasting.
It appealed for a public hearing to gather public opinion on how to tackle hate speech.
The centre expressed fears, if such trend is left unchecked, it could snowball into unnecessary ethnic religious crisis.
According to him, CITAD, with support from National Democratic Institute (NDI), has been tracking and countering hate speech and online violence, pointing out that, “bearing in mind that the population of Nigerians on Social Media platforms is speedily growing, and the online visibility of conventional media also gives room for discussion.”
He explained: “we have consistently noticed ethnic tension through comments and remarks of Nigerians on Social Media. The volume of ethnic-based hate speech we have been tracking and countering previously is evidence that out of 387 hate speech instances captured in November, 2019, 124 representing 32 per cent were ethnic based.”
He said in December, 2019, out of 205 cases of hate speech, 69 instances, representing 34 per cent, were ethnic-based.
