Technology has proven time and time again that it has come to stay, from the advent of computers, to mobile phones, to digitalization and now to Artificial Intelligence. The industry has gone through various degrees of failures and successes and it has finally picked up to the extent that it has started to affect and transform our way of doing business.
On the 8th of January, 2021, the world awoke to receive the news that former American President, Donald Trump had been banned from Twitter for ‘inciting comments’ in the wake of the attacks at the American Capitol which left five persons dead. Commenting on the rationale for the ban, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey via a Twitter post observed:
Stakeholders within the Nigerian borders, have decried the role, that social media has played in Nigeria’s present social engineering and it is upon this premise, and many before it, that there has been a recent move to enact several laws, or amend existing laws, to provide rigorous measures for the control of the social media space, such as the Hate Speech Bill, And The Social Media Bill and others. We will however examine the existing laws, governing this civilization of social engineering, and make submissions in respect of the above.