The Regulation of Social Media in Nigeria and its Effect on Free Speech: Perspectives from Constitutional Law and International Norms
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This thesis explores the multifaceted and evolving topic of social media regulation, with a focus on Nigeria. As social media platforms have become central to communication, information dissemination, and public discourse, concerns have arisen about their impact on individuals, society, and democracy. The research question addressed in this thesis is whether the Nigerian bills on restriction of social media can legally restrict false speech and hate speech without overreaching on the right to freedom of expression, and if not, what measures can be taken to improve these bills.\nThe thesis begins by analyzing three key theories for the justification of freedom of expression, which show that freedom of expression is essential to the discovery of truth, self-autonomy, and promotion of an open and vibrant democratic discourse. However, these theories are not an absolute justification and may be restricted. The thesis also examines the conditions for justification of limits on freedom of expression in Nigeria, which is that the law must be shown to be within reasonable limits permissible in a democratic society. Section 45 of the Nigerian Constitution states specific grounds for the restriction of freedom of expression, but the section is vague as it gives no further direction as to how Nigerian courts should balance competing interests, such as freedom of expression on the one hand and public interest on the other.\nThe thesis argues that the importation of proportionality analysis and international standards is necessary to restrict hate speech and false speech in Nigeria while protecting the right to freedom of expression. The delicate balance between preserving freedom of expression and addressing harmful content, such as hate speech and false information, is a critical consideration in social media regulation.\nThe thesis suggests that drawing from Canadian law and international standards could enhance Nigeria’s regulation of free speech on social media. The thesis concludes that the protection of freedom of expression is crucial, especially in a diverse cultural, political, and socio-economic landscape such as Nigeria.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".