TheNigeriaLawyer Editorial
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There have been controversies in the cyberspace over alleged personalization of Twitter account by Nigeria’s immediate past Senate President, Bukola Saraki, belonging to his former office.
The account, which bore Senate President of Nigeria, was changed to Former Senate President of the 8th Nigerian Senate still using the official twitter handle @SPNigeria.
Actually, the account @SPNigeria was created in June 2015 for the purpose of information dissemination from the office.
It is submitted that the action of Bukola Saraki is quite strange. Framework and guidelines for the use of social media platforms in public institutions, 2019 are the new regulatory guidelines released by the National Information Technology Agency, NITDA to regulate the use of social media in Ministries, Departments and Agencies in the country. Paragraph 2.5.2.v of the guidelines which deals with account governance clearly stipulates that accounts are to be handed over whenever the account handler is leaving his office including the password (in accordance with the handing over procedure(s) that may be made by the organization though). The guidelines further vests in institutions the power to determine who publishes or posts, how each piece of information is published and in what capacity (personal or official) responses are disseminated. The institution is also obliged to determine how often pages/information are updated and posts/comments are responded to.
In spite of the foregoing clear provisions, Senator Bukola Saraki still went ahead to use the twitter handle to his whims and caprices. He has left the office of the senate president already. Upon completion of his four-year tenure as Senate president, he ought to have transferred the account to the new Senate president, Ahmad Lawan. Instead, the former Senate president decided to archive his activities on the former handle.
Such situation is quite unfortunate. It is even more worrisome that the person doing it is the former number 3 citizen of the country. This confirms the lamentation of Dr Ibrahim Isa Pantani, the Director General of NITDA, whom Daily Post reported on 25th January, 2019 to have said in a press briefing in Abuja that in so many cases, when the handlers of public institutions social media platforms leave office, they convert the social media accounts to their personal use, which makes the institutions lose much of its important data. He said:
“In some cases, due to the absence of clear policies by Federal institutions, important information and records are lost when handlers of these platforms either move from their roles or leave the organization. This constitutes a risk to Information management and public accountability.
“NITDA will continue to monitor the use of social media for federal public institutions to ensure consistency and professional use of these platforms.”
He said the agency would not hesitate to sanction violators of the Regulatory Instrument appropriately.
“The Agency has taken its Regulatory responsibility seriously, and in 2019 it will ensure that violators of NITDA’s Regulatory Instruments are appropriately sanctioned. Our Standards, Frameworks and Guidelines are regulatory policies and are issued for the sake of being relevant.”
It is hoped that such attitude of public officers would come to a stop. If such attitude continues unabated, it would lead to multiplicity of accounts for a single office or agency and such multiplicity of accounts occurs would open doors for misinformation and peddling of religiously provocative and divisive statements by internet fraudsters and other enemies of the country who may open accounts using the names of such institutions or offices.
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