Military to start monitoring social media comments of Nigerians

The Nigerian military has declared its intentions to start monitoring the social media for comments that could be threats to the nation’s security as well as anti-government.

This was revealed by John Enenche, director of defence information, while featuring on a Channels TV programme on Wednesday.

He said the measure became necessary in the wake of hate speeches and comments threatening Nigeria’s unity.

Eneche’s declaration, comes two days after President Muhammadu Buhari expressed worries that some comments on the social media “have crossed our national red lines”.

Enenche claimed the military can no longer fold its arms and watch unscrupulous people manipulate the citizens through social media platforms.

“Imagine when the president came back and addressed the nation, not up to 30 minutes later, a fake speech of the commander-in-chief was being circulated in order to do what? To derail the people,” he said.

“If you are not very sharp and if you didn’t listen to the speech or you don’t have a copy of it like I had it almost immediately, you wouldn’t know. So, looking at it from that perspective, it is a challenge everywhere.

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“What are we doing? In the military, we are now taking on it more seriously than ever. We have our strategic media centres that monitor the social media to be able to sieve out and react to all the ones that will be anti-government, be anti-military, (and) be anti-security.

“We tackle them appropriately with appropriate responses. Ahead of that, we are also proactive.

“We have measures in place, scientific measures to be able to sieve this information and also to get the public and let them know that some of this information they are getting is not genuine are not true and their objective is an anti-corporate existence of this country.”