Nigeria In One Minute
FG won’t tamper with press freedom, Social Media –Lai
Nigerian Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on Tuesday said that the Muhammadu Buhari-led government has no immediate or long-term plan to stifle press freedom.
He also said that the Federal Government will neither regulate nor tamper with the operations of Social Medial regardless of its “warts and all.”
The minister stated this in a statement through his Senior Assistant on Media, Segun Adeyemi, where he denied government involvement in the recent arrest of the publisher of an online newspaper and a reporter working for the paper.
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He said, “The Federal Government will not do anything to stifle press freedom, because it is keenly aware that a free press is vital to the success of any democracy.
“The Federal Government has nothing to do with the arrest, it’s purely a private affair involving a citizen and a privately-owned newspaper,” Mohammed said wondering how people now construe that as an attempt by the government to intimidate the press.
”We have said it before and we want to re-state it: The Federal Government has no immediate or long-term plan to stifle press freedom. Even the Social Media, with its warts and all, will neither be regulated nor have its operations tampered with,” he said.
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