Osun sets up committee on cybercrimes, fake news

APC kicks, says move to muzzle opposition

OSUN State Government has expressed worry over what it described as pervasive fake news in the state.

It, therefore, stressedthe need for all stakeholders to be deliberate in addressing the menace.

Consequently, the state government said it had set up a cybercrime action committee to give effect to relevant provisions of the law concerning cybercrimes, cyberbullying and deliberate online false news.

A statement signed by the state’s Commissioner for Information, Kolapo Alimi, yesterday, said that the step became necessary to sanitise the governance space and ensure that politicking and governance take place under an atmosphere of responsibility, decency and honesty.

The statement stated that the increasing wave of fake news negatively affects both the government and the opposition and that all operators should be brought within the compass of the law in the exercise of their rights as guaranteed by the Constitution.

Alimi said the committee has journalists and legal practitioners as members, adding that the mandate is to ensure that fake news is nipped in the bud, no matter who the perpetrators are.

He stressed that the committee would apply relevant sections of the Cybercrime Act of 2015 as operational clauses to ensure that all stakeholders operate within the law. M EANWHILE, the Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress has said that the setting up of the committee was a ploy to muzzle the voices of the opposition and subsequently turn himself into a dictator in a supposed democratic government.

The state’s APC Chairman, Tajudeen Lawal, in a statement by the party's Director of Media and Information, Kola Olabisi, described the move as an afterthought aimed at "planting fears in the mind of patriotic citi