The Nigerian government has asked Google (GOOGL.O) to block banned groups and terrorist organizations in the country from using YouTube channels and livestreams. The call was made by the Information Minister Lai Mohammed on Thursday when he met with Google executives in Abuja.
YouTube “channels and emails containing names of banned groups and their affiliates should not be allowed on Google platforms,” Mohammed said he told Google executives in Abuja, the country’s capital.
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The minister said the government was particularly concerned with online activities by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). The government has labeled IPOB, a group campaigning for the secession of a southeastern region of Nigeria, a “terrorist organization.”
The YouTube concerns are part of an effort by the government, the minister said, to protect Nigerian internet users from harmful effects of social media, especially ahead of a presidential election next year.
Charles Murito, Google’s sub-Saharan African director for government affairs and public policy, in a statement said the company already has measures to address the Nigerian government’s concerns.
Those measures include a system for trained users to flag troublesome content, he added. “We share the same goals and objectives,” Murito said. “We do not want our platform to be used for ill purposes.”
The country has been exploring ways to regulate social media usage in the country. Nigeria is home to millions of internet users and platforms like YouTube, Twitter , Facebook and Tiktok are popular.
The Government had sparred with Twitter in 2021, culminating in the issuance of an order suspending Twitter operations in Nigeria. It lifted the ban six months later.
The ECOWAS Court of Justice siting in Abuja later in the year ruled that the suspension of Twitter by the government of President Muhammadu Buhari was unlawful, and ordered the administration never to repeat it again.
Nnamdi Maduakor is a Writer, Investor and Entrepreneur
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