Nigeria’s cybercrime reforms depart journalists in danger | Opinions

The officers handled journalist Saint Mienpamo Onitsha as if he was violent and harmful. Weapons drawn, they arrested him on the residence of a buddy, drove him to the native police station in Nigeria’s southern Bayelsa State, after which flew him to the nationwide capital, Abuja.

Every week later, they charged Onitsha beneath the nation’s 2015 Cybercrimes Act and detained him over his reporting about tensions within the oil-rich Niger Delta area. This was in October 2023. He was launched on bail in early February and is because of seem earlier than a court docket on June 4.

The Cybercrimes Act is tragically acquainted to Nigeria’s media neighborhood. Since its enactment, at the least 25 journalists have confronted prosecution beneath the legislation, together with 4 arrested earlier this yr. Anande Terungwa, a lawyer for Onitsha, described the legislation to me as a software misused to “hunt journalists”.

For years, media and human rights teams had been calling for the act to be amended to stop its misuse as a software for censorship and intimidation. Then, in November final yr, Nigeria’s Senate proposed amendments and held a public listening to to assist form modifications. The Committee to Defend Journalists (CPJ), alongside different civil society and press teams, submitted really helpful reforms.

On February 28, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu signed amendments to the act, together with revisions to a piece criminalising expression on-line, in line with a duplicate of the legislation shared with me by Yahaya Danzaria, the clerk of Nigeria’s Home of Representatives. The modifications, which have but to be printed within the authorities gazette, have buoyed hopes for improved press freedom, however the legislation continues to go away journalists prone to arrest and surveillance.

“It’s higher, but it surely’s positively not the place we wish it to be,” Khadijah El-Usman, senior applications officer with the Nigeria-based digital rights group Paradigm Initiative, informed me in a cellphone interview in regards to the amended legislation. “There are nonetheless provisions that may be taken benefit of, particularly by these in energy.”

One of many main issues has been Part 24 of the legislation, which defines the crime of “cyberstalking”. It’s this part that authorities repeatedly used to cost journalists, and it is among the sections that was amended.

Underneath the earlier model of the legislation, Part 24 criminalised the usage of a pc to ship messages deemed “grossly offensive, pornographic or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”, and punished such offences with as much as three years in jail and a effective. The identical punishment utilized for sending knowingly false messages “for the aim of inflicting annoyance” or “useless nervousness”. In apply, this meant journalists risked jail time based mostly on extremely subjective interpretations of on-line reporting.

The amended model maintains the heavy penalty, however refines the offence as pc messages which might be pornographic or knowingly false, “for the aim of inflicting a breakdown of legislation and order, posing a risk to life, or inflicting such messages to be despatched”. Whereas the narrower language is welcome, the likelihood for abuse stays.

“It may have been extra particular in wording,” Solomon Okedara, a Lagos-based digital rights lawyer, informed me after reviewing the amended part. He mentioned it was an enchancment as a result of the burden of proof to deliver prices is larger, however nonetheless leaves room for authorities to make arrests on claims that sure reporting has prompted a “breakdown of legislation and order”.

It stays to be seen precisely how these modifications will have an effect on the instances of journalists and others beforehand charged beneath now-amended sections. “It’s now for the legal professionals to make use of,” Danzaria defined. “You can’t use an outdated legislation to prosecute any person…if [the case] is ongoing, the brand new legislation supersedes no matter was in place.”

For Onitsha’s case, Terungwa mentioned he would search to include the amendments into his defence in court docket. CPJ continues to name for authorities to drop all felony prosecutions of journalists in reference to their work.

One other problem with the legislation – even after the current amendments – is the way it could allow surveillance abuses. Part 38 of Nigeria’s Cybercrimes Act fails to explicitly require legislation enforcement to acquire a court-issued warrant earlier than accessing “visitors knowledge” and “subscriber data” from service suppliers. This oversight hole is especially regarding given how Nigeria’s police have used journalists’ name knowledge to trace and arrest them.

“I’m trying in the direction of a future cybercrimes act that respects human rights,” El-Usman emphasised, noting the necessity for legal guidelines that guard towards abuses, not simply in Nigeria, however throughout the area. From Mali to Benin to Zimbabwe, authorities have used cybercrime legal guidelines and digital codes to arrest reporters for his or her work. Journalists’ privateness can be broadly beneath risk.

Nigeria’s lawmakers have confirmed they will act to enhance freedom of the press and expression of their nation, however journalists stay in danger. Those self same lawmakers have the chance to make additional reforms that might defend the press regionally and ship a rights-respecting message past their borders. Will they seize it?

The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.