It’s no longer news, that the National Assembly has voted against electronic transmission of electronic results in 2023. Normally, this shouldn’t be a form of discuss in this digital age, however, the way and manner at which our legislatures outrightly rejected the bill shows a sinister plan or agenda as we look forward to the 2023 elections.
This is a nation where students are mandated to get the National Identity Number for them to register for unified exams, even our bank accounts and phone numbers are linked via a digital platform, but INEC result transmission and collation must lead to Abuja.
The outright rejection of the bill is a dent on the legislative arm for lack of proper and way forward thinking. The executive Twitter ban is also one major fail on the part of the legislative arm.
The Twitter ban has shown we have a legislative vacuum. We shouldn’t as a nation be involved in the use of guerilla tactics to solve legislative problems.
Nations all over the world are generating revenues from infringements on the rights of their citizenry by social media corporations, while our legislatures are made to make our citizens suffer from their lackadaisical approach and non forward thinking.
Our legislatures are more concerned with bills that tend to gag the media.The Minister of information and Culture, Lai Mohammed was quoted to have asked the Legislative arm to include all online and internet broadcasting to the rights of NBC.
He said all online and internet broadcasting entities should be included in section two (c) of the bill – which gives powers to the NBC to “receive, process and consider applications for the establishment, ownership of radio and television stations”.
“I want to add that internet broadcasting and all online media should be included in the bill,”
Mr Mohammed said at a public hearing.
This is one of so many laws formulated to silence the citizenry, when we should be looking at making laws to ease information dissemination and how we can benefit from the digital space of information dissemination.
The team formulated and led by the Minister of Information to negotiate and have a round table discuss with Twitter has only shown forward thinking is a farce in this side of the world.
With notable young and vibrant names doing well in the tech world, the list is a slap to what the youths have achieved in technological development.
The legislature shouldn’t be a rubber stamp of the executive where everything goes. We need forward thinking legislatures and not where we debate archaic matters.
This is the same legislative arm that passed a bill where we are looking at the exploration of fossil oil, when countries are already looking for alternatives to fossil oil.
We can’t make progress with a disfunctional legislative arm, Nigeria must move forward and the time is now. The time is now for straight forward thinking legislative bills and laws.
