Joseph Bakare
The Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has cautioned against any plan to regulate social media saying it may not be the best option for government.
Osinbajo, however counseled that the best way out of the abuse of the social media was for users to caution themselves.
The Vice President said this on Thursday in Abuja during an inter-faith tolerance dialogue organised by the United Arab Emirates, adding that he does not subscribe to the regulation of the social media by the government.
He said: “As religious leaders and media personalities, also as people of faith in general, we share a common calling to apprehend the truth.
“We absolutely need to be careful in our use of social media and if we do not want to promote the kind of conflict that can go completely out of hand, we must be sure that we are policing and regulating ourselves, especially with social media.
“I don’t think that government regulation is necessarily the way to go, but I believe that we as persons of faith and we, as leaders, and those of us who use the social media actively owe a responsibility to our society and to everyone else, to ensure that we don’t allow it to become an instrument of conflict and instrument of war.”
The UAE Ambassador to Nigeria, Dr. Fahad Al Taffaq, described his country as the global capital of tolerance, noting that the government had declared 2019 as the year of tolerance.
Al Taffaq said Nigerian churches were also springing up in his country, adding that the Commonwealth of Zion Assembly opened a branch in Dubai in 2017.
