A Federal High Court, Abuja, on Thursday, dismissed a suit filed against the Federal Government for directing television and radio stations to delete their Twitter accounts.
Justice Obiora Egwuatu, in a judgment, dismissed the suit for lacking in merit and awarded the sum of N100,000 against the plaintiff.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Incorporated Trustees of the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) had, in June, filed a fundamental rights enforcement suit marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/496/21, against three defendants.
In the suit, SERAP had sued the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), the Director-General of NBC and the Minister of Information and Culture as 1st to 3rd defendants respectively.
The suit followed the order by NBC, asking all broadcast outfits to immediately suspend patronage of the social media giant after it was banned for violating Nigerian laws.
The group had sought an order of perpetual injunction restraining the Federal Government and the regulator from “censoring, regulating, licensing and controlling the social media operations and contents by broadcast stations and activities of social media service providers in Nigeria.”
It also sought and order setting aside the directive asking broadcast stations to stop using Twitter, as being “unconstitutional, unlawful, inconsistent and incompatible with the Nigerian Constitution of 1999 [as amended], and the country’s obligations under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
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SERAP stated further that the court had an important role to play in the protection and preservation of the rule of law to ensure that persons and institutions operate within the defined ambit of constitutional and statutory limitations.
It argued that the directive amounted to a fundamental breach of the principle of legality, the rights to freedom of expression, access to information, and media freedom, and incompatible with the country’s international human rights obligations, among others.
In their preliminary objections, the 1st and 2nd defendants urged the court to dismiss the suit.
They argued that the directive did not in any way affect the plaintiff.
They further averred that the action was taken in the interest of the country’s national security, economy and unity, adding that the suit was filed in bad faith.
The defendants told the court that apart from Twitter, there are other social media platforms through which the plaintiff could access information and interact like Facebook, etc.
Also in his argument, the Minister of Information, through his lawyer, Nelson Orji, said the Federal Government operates within the ambit of the law and would not do anything to undermine it.
He said that the operation of Twitter, an American microblogging and social media outfit, within the Nigerian cyberspace required it to operate within the confines of the laws.
