‘I Don’t Want Some Dictator Like Buhari’ – Soyinka Speaks On Internet Regulation

Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka, has faulted the immediate past President Muhammadu Buhari, for banning Twitter in 2021.

Naija News reports that Soyinka, during an interview with Arise News Television at the CANEX Live Theatre closing ceremony of the 3rd Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF) 2023, convened in Cairo, Egypt by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), in collaboration with the African Union and African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), called Buhari, an idiot and dictator.

He said while the internet and social media space had been infested with foul communications and languages by people of lower intelligence, integrity and sense of concern of involvement, regulation of social media should be constructive, organized and structured.

According to Soyinka, the internet is a valuable contribution to the entire human enterprise, and the country needs to be careful when considering regulation, unlike how Buhari outrightly banned Twitter in Nigeria.

Soyinka said, “When I see a space being infested, a communication space infested by the people of lower intelligence, integrity, sense of concern of involvement, then existed in the print media; we should also remember that this internet, there is nothing novel all about it, it is an enhancement of something we have always been doing before.

“It is an enhancement of the print medium and there is a more critical approach to the print medium – the editor sits down, even letters to the editor particularly go through full vetting processes.

“The publishing enterprise has a huge role to play in this. Maybe we even have to organize weeklong, monthlong seminars across the African continent so that let this garbage come from elsewhere. Why should it be coming from my own society? A society that has produced engineers and doctors who are valued all over the world.

“Theoretically, if you are going to regulate, who regulates it? How does he go about it? Does regulation begin from education, new education? Do we include teaching from the level of primary schools because even children now speak a language which I don’t understand – internet language? Watch them at work there, I’m like an illiterate and I will never compete with that.

“So, maybe we will have to totally revise our educational system to take in this new monster which, however, is a valuable contribution to the entire human enterprise.

“So, while we talk about regulation, I want us to be very careful there. I don’t want some dictator like this last one, former President Muhammadu Buhari, who banned Twitter. Idiot!

“You just wake up and say you are banning Facebook, that is nonsense! Do something constructive, methodical, structured about it, including making the criminals understand that they deserve to be somewhere else.”