Umahi to DSS: Go after Nigerians making unsubstantiated claims on social media

Dave Umahi, the governor of Ebonyi State, has urged the Nigeria Police Force and the Department of State Services to invite Nigerians who make “unsubstantiated comments” on social media that can inflame the polity.

The governor, whose state has recently been targeted by alleged herdsmen, said politicians’ unguarded social media comments are one of the reasons why complete calm has yet to return to the affected communities in his state.

This was claimed by Umahi, a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress, on Channels Television’s “Sunrise Daily” show.

He said, “The level of crimes in the country is as a result of unpatriotic acts of a lot of us. We, leaders, we come out on television and then we speak, indict other regions, we speak against other regions, we pick on the leader of a country and then castigate the leader of a country. There is no patriotism at all.”

The governor, who belongs to the same party as the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), added, “The way to prevent this thing is that if you are making unsubstantiated statements in the social media, the police, the SSS, you should be invited to explain and this is no politics because the country cannot fold our hands and allow people to plunge the country into another war and this is very important.

“I was told that one of the world wars started with a family quarrel and so if you are making a statement on social media calling it freedom of speech, you must come to the law to substantiate it.

“What I have in the state now should have stopped but for the politicians who are making unguarded accusations and statements in the social media and then people outside the state will just cash on on that and emotions will rise and the problem will continue.”

Earlier, Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, blamed unpatriotic Nigerians for Twitter’s decision to establish its African headquarters in Ghana.

The President’s administration has recently sought harsher punishments for those who “misuse social media.”

The Senate is currently debating the Internet Falsehood and Manipulation Protection Act of 2019, also known as the anti-social media bill.

It aims to make it illegal to use social media to spread misleading or malicious information. Senator Mohammed Musa, a member of the President’s party, the All Progressives Congress, introduced the bill.