Nigeria Asks Google and Meta to Control News Spread Ahead of February 25th Election

Nigerian Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed. (photo: dock, thisday)

JAKARTA – The government of Nigeria has asked Google and Meta to control the spread of fake news on their platform ahead of the country's presidential election this month. This was said by the Minister of Information of Nigeria, Lai Mohammed on Friday, 3 February.

Nigerians will go to the polls on February 25 to elect a new president, with three frontrunners promising to deal with rising living costs, insecurity and slow economic growth.

Mohammed said he met with Meta and Google representatives in Abuja last Friday and requested that they make posts from official channels visible on their platform, and should flag unverified election results coming from unofficial sources.

He also asked the two companies to cooperate with the security services to remove posts that could incite violence.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, has been looking for ways to regulate social media use. The country is home to millions of internet users and platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and the very popular Tiktok.

Mohammed's request comes after he last year asked Google to block the use of YouTube channels and live streams by separatist groups and Islamic militants in the country.

"This action, if implemented, will greatly assist in preventing the spread of fake news and disinformation on social media before, during, and after the elections," said Mohammed.

Google representative at the meeting, Dawn Dimowo, said Google had trained about 6.000 journalists in addition to engaging and expanding the scope of fact-checking platforms like Dubawa to identify and flag fake news.

Head of Anglophone West Africa Meta, Adaora Ikenze, said her organization had set up an election protection operations center with 60-80 people working around the clock to ensure its platform was not used to discredit elections.